Every month, we celebrate a woman whose work is rewriting the narrative for communities across Nigeria. This month, we honour Raquel Kasham Daniel, a woman who has quietly, and persistently, been transforming the way schools protect and empower their girls.
As the Executive Director of Beyond the Classroom Foundation (BTCF), Raquel has long been known for her advocacy, her mentorship, and her fierce commitment to girls’ education. But over the past few years, her work has evolved into something deeper, something systemic. She is now the architect of one of Nigeria’s most innovative school-safety frameworks: The Safer Girl Approach.
A Vision Born From Listening to Girls
Raquel’s journey with girls began long before the spotlight. She spent years in classrooms, community centers, and rural villages listening to the real stories girls whispered when nobody else was paying attention. Stories of harassment, fear, intimidation, and a school culture that often taught girls to endure rather than speak.
She realized that the problem was not simply individual behavior, it was structural.
Girls weren’t unsafe because they lacked confidence.
They were unsafe because the systems around them lacked protection.
And so she built one.
The Safer Girl Approach: A New Way Forward
Instead of creating another once-off program, Raquel built a framework, one that strengthens everyone surrounding a girl:
- Teachers trained to be protectors, not punishers
- Schools equipped with clear safeguarding policies and reporting structures
- Parents engaged as partners in safety
- Communities mobilized to shift harmful norms
- Girls empowered with the knowledge and confidence to speak, report, and lead
The approach became the backbone of BTCF’s Safer Girls Program, and before long, schools began to see the difference.
Impact That Speaks for Itself
Today, 20 schools across Nigeria have adopted elements of the Safer Girl Approach, a milestone that signals something deeper than numbers. It signals trust. It signals belief. It signals a shift away from silence toward accountability and protection.
Teachers report fewer behavioural conflicts.
Girls report feeling seen and heard.
Schools say they finally have a pathway to respond to the needs of their most vulnerable students.
This is systems change, alive, practical, and impactful.
A Leader Creating Systemic Impact
Where many organizations stop at awareness campaigns, Raquel pushes further. She designs systems that shift behaviors, policies, and outcomes for girls in the long term. Her work under BTCF includes:
- HER Safe Space
- The ReIGNITE Project for adolescent girls
- Beyond Her Odds Initiative
- Safer Girls Program, where the Safer Girl Approach emerged
Each project builds a protective ecosystem around girls, online, offline, at home, and in school.
Global Recognition, Local Impact
In 2025, Raquel joined 44 women across the world as a VV Visionaries Fellow under Vital Voices and the Estée Lauder Emerging Leaders Fund, an honor reserved for women leading bold, scalable solutions. For Raquel, it was not just a personal achievement. It was a global validation of the systems-change work she has dedicated her life to building.
A Woman Who Refuses to Be Silent
Raquel’s mission is rooted in a simple belief:
Girls should not have to be brave just to learn.
This belief drives her work, her voice, and her relentless pursuit of safer schools across Nigeria. She is changing the narrative, not by demanding that girls toughen up, but by insisting that the institutions around them step up.
Without fanfare, without noise, she is building what generations of girls will one day thank her for:
a world where their safety is not a privilege, but a guarantee.
This month, and always, we honor Raquel Kasham Daniel, a systems changer, a visionary, a protector of girls,
and our Woman of the Month.
