“Sexual abuse is very prevalent in Nigeria and data shows that one of the most powerful ways to drastically reduce the rate of sexual abuse is to educate young people. Educate them however, educate them in the most age appropriate and relevant way. Now for typical African parents, they don’t usually know what to say, how to say it, when to say it, how to answer questions, the perspective to go about it because many parents are paranoid, many parents are scared that they may be saying too much.”
“The Body Smart Girl Bundle essentially is like a blueprint that says if your child is this age, this is what’s safe to say. If your child is this age, this is what is safe to say. So it really helps parents provide the sex education that their girls desperately need. The very sex education that drastically reduces sexual abuse and it kind of addresses it in so beautifully age appropriate ways.”
In this section of the Gutsy Spotlight, Irene Bangwell gave us some helpful tips on sex education and self-esteem needs of the girl child. She also pointed out some of the prevalent issues girls face, how we can address them, and factors that may pose as barriers to your efforts in doing so. Get comfy because there’s a lot to learn over here.
Irene Bangwell’s Biography
Irene Bangwell is an educator and a parenting coach. As an educator, Irene and her husband, Kingsley are the cofounders of The KNOSK N100-a-day Secondary School, Kuje. This is a private-public Secondary school designed for children from low income families.
As a parent coach, Irene is the creator of the Body Smart Bundle for Girls – a biblical abstinence based sex education tool for girls, educators and parents of girls. She holds conversations that empower parents with the knowledge, skills and resolve to parent wholesome girls. She is also the convener of the Safer Christmas Carnival; a family body safety event.
Irene mentors 100s of girls on a monthly basis through her remarkable program tagged *the 10/10 girl squad*. Her vision is an African continent with millions of females in her board rooms championing development and inclusive growth for every African.
Irene holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Banking and Finance from University of Calabar, a Post Graduate Diploma in Education from University of Ilorin and Executive Education Certificate in Leaders of Learning from HarvardX. Learn more about Irene’s work on: www.knoskeducation.org and on Instagram @raisinggirls.ng
Gutsy Chat with Irene Bangwell
- Given your remarkable work in education, parenting, and empowering the girl child, what inspired your passion for these areas, and what drives your continued commitment to making a positive impact in these spaces that also led you to co found the KNOSK #100-a-day secondary school?
What inspired my passion in education, parenting and empowering the girl child? I think it’s a combination of different things, different events. I was a child raised by a single parent and I grew up with my grandparents. My grandmother and I didn’t always see eye to eye, generational difference I would say. I grew up with my mum’s brothers, they were firm, they were strict, they were great but I didn’t always think they were great. I found out that as a young person there were moments in my life that I didn’t make the best decisions and that came from not knowing or not having access to knowledge, not having access to support.
When I say I didn’t always make the right decisions, it’s not always an immoral choice. There were times I wasn’t resilient enough, there were things that I learnt hit me in a way that I shouldn’t have. There were relationships that I should have nurtured, there were life skills I didn’t have and therefore there were opportunities that I lost.
So bottom line for me is I’m meeting children at diverse intersections. I’m meeting them in schools to empower them, to make school more empowering, to help them see value in education, see value in making certain choices. I’m meeting them at the intersection of their parents where I’m working to empower parents to make sure their homes are empowering enough for the best version of their kids to come alive. I’m meeting them at the intersection of the girl child where I’m looking back at the moment of threats of sexual abuse, attempts of sexual abuse, molestation, poor dating choices. And all of that is just keeping it together.
What has sustained my commitment is a number of things. I think the first thing is knowing that for the work that I do there’s the Holy Spirit inspiring me at the heart of it. And the Holy Spirit has a way of sustaining our passion, our interest. He has a way of giving us meaning and just helping us see that we’re making progress. I also think raising my daughters for example has helped me in very strategic ways.
My two daughters are in my school and so knowing that I want to give them that education that opens doors for them but also seeing how privileged they are in the same way, seeing how privileged my kids are and knowing that there’s nothing that they did to deserve to be born in my home and it’s the same thing with other children being born in other realities. There’s nothing that they did to be there. Just kind of motivates me to say, look, a child is innocent and they deserve the best and I want to do that.
When it comes to the girl child thing, I’m just looking at my girls, the questions they have, the journeys, the navigations, the support that they need periodically and it’s just helping me know that look, I have to continue doing this and the work that I do is valid.
- How do I think education can drive social change, particularly for girls with disadvantaged backgrounds?
First and foremost, education drives social change because done right helps a human come into the fullness of their potential and there is no society that is safe unless it has within it people that see their potential, see the opportunities around them to nurture that potential and see the opportunities to maximise it. Education for me is a place where talents are identified, nurtured, ignited, values are shaped, opportunities are pointed to and so for me it remains a remarkable tool for driving social change and transforming societies.
For girls coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, education done right, which encompasses whether it’s body safety education and mainstream education, is supposed to re-engineer self-worth, self-esteem, re-engineer perception of value in a girl. Where you start to let the girl know you’re not just in this world so that someone can look at you, look upon you and say how beautiful you are and then you’ve got some value. It’s about saying you’re talented, you’re gifted, your insights and thoughts are welcome and there’s a space for you to impact your world. So I continue to think that education done right is the most powerful thing you can use to change the world.
- What inspired you to create the Body Smart Girl Bundle for Girls and how does it address the unique challenges of sex education in Nigeria?
First, sexual abuse is very prevalent in Nigeria and data shows that one of the most powerful ways to drastically reduce the rate of sexual abuse is to educate young people. Educate them however, educate them in the most age appropriate and relevant way. Now for typical African parents, they don’t usually know what to say, how to say it, when to say it, how to answer questions, the perspective to go about it because many parents are paranoid, many parents are scared that they may be saying too much.
The Body Smart Girl Bundle essentially is like a blueprint that says if your child is this age, this is what’s safe to say. If your child is this age, this is what is safe to say. So it really helps parents provide the sex education that their girls desperately need. The very sex education that drastically reduces sexual abuse and it kind of addresses it in so beautifully age appropriate ways.
For example, the ages that girls are in and their risk of abuse comes from predators. There’s a phase that a child is in and their risk of abuse also comes from their curiosity. There’s the age they’re in and puberty and the pressures and the feelings associated with poor decision making and so the Body Smart Girl Bundle kind of picks each age group and just addresses it for the girl the way that she deserves it to or the way that she needs it to be.
Alright. Okay. Yeah, sex education is not integrated in our system as best as it should and to be honest with you, many times what we have available in our society is something called the comprehensive sexual education and whether or not it indoctrinates children in Western values, the very fact that it has Western origin makes sex education to be frowned at.
Anyone engaging parents to rephrase what that word is and I did this a while ago. I stopped calling it sex education and I just said it’s body safety education. It kind of makes parents be at peace. So yes, while it’s not well integrated in our system, we need to know where parental fears are coming from. So reframing it can help.
But we need to also remember that for most parents, they themselves did not get adequate sex education. So there’s no blueprint to pass on. So I recommend that we have more conversations and, you know, point parents to resources such as the Body Smart Girl Bundle that puts their concerns at ease so that they find that it is a conversation that is easy enough to hold.
- What unique challenges do you see girls facing today and how do you empower them, the parents and educators, to overcome these obstacles?
What challenges do I see facing girls today and how would I empower them, their parents and their educators, you know, to overcome these obstacles? The very first obstacle I see is low self-esteem. And low self-esteem is manifesting in diverse ways. It’s showing up in girls not raising up their hands to take up an opportunity. When I’m talking about girls, I’m talking about girls of all ages. Girls seeing an opportunity and second-guessing themselves.
Girls counting themselves out of big things because they don’t think they’re quite deserving and they think other people are quite qualified but they are not. And so the self-esteem is a big deal to me and one of the things I’ve been able to do over the years is to support parents to, you know, provide the building blocks for this.
For me, the blueprint that I’ve designed to help build self-esteem stands on three pillars. Self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-honour or self-respect. And so every day, I mean up till just recently, last weekend or so, or two weekends ago, I took the time to tell parents practices in our classrooms and at home that mitigates healthy self-awareness, healthy self-acceptance and healthy self-respect. And so those things are really cross-cutting for me.
In addition to that, providing girls life skills education where, what do I mean by that? Many girls are growing up with the wrong idea about what it takes to be what. And so through life skills, they get to see that other thing that you’re thinking about. This is really what it takes to be it. This is what it takes to achieve it. There’s nothing special about this thing and let me stop speaking in abstract terms.
So there’s a girl in school that would like the idea of leadership but she really tends to talk about standing in front of people and her mind keeps gravitating to how her shoes are, you know, she’s not hanging out with the cool girls or she’s not qualified. When she grows up, boys are going to laugh at her. A boy she has a crush on that is not paying attention to her will make fun of her. They’ll say things to her and she doesn’t realize that well what it takes to be a leader is to have a goal. There’ll be people, no matter what, there’ll be people who want to listen to you.
There’ll be people who want to work with you. There’ll be people who absolutely admire you. And the main thing that you need is to be able to communicate your ideas clearly. What you wore, the shoe, your hair, where you’re coming from, things you’ve done in the past are inconsequential.
And so this is part of what I’m doing with the 10 over 10 Girls Squad where I’m mentoring girls on a monthly basis. And girls are learning about different things. They’re learning about body safety. They’re learning about life skills. They’re learning about decision making, navigating failure, navigating pressure. We’re looking at the things that always become problems in the future and showing girls how to surmount those obstacles.
So I hope that answers the question.
- How do you stay current with the evolving challenges faced by girls and what trends or issues do you see on the horizon?
I think raising girls myself helps me stay in the loop because I’m looking at my girls. I’m looking at the pressures they’re facing. I have a mentoring circle now with girls that I’m seeing on a monthly basis. Their questions are showing up differently. So it just helps me understand how to keep things in the loop.
The two things I’m really concerned about coming in the future is number one, online safety risk, online abuse. It’s already building. And I feel like if we don’t do something to stop it, it’s going to blow out of proportion. That’s one.
Number two, girls not wanting to do hard work because there’s always been that, but there was the thing of I want to work hard. I think there’s a thing with what social media is putting in front of our girls where girls are thinking, oh, I just need some guy who’s going to take care of me. Oh, and now you hear girls saying they’d rather pick a boy who’s doing internet fraud compared to one who earns a decent income. And the very idea that my body can command money and a lot of it is a big problem for me.
One of the things I’m trying to do is to show girls long-term value. And I just want us to be careful. Online safety risk, there’s already a lot of mental health issues. I think it’s going to continue to grow. And then we have the monetization problem where girls are monetizing their bodies or creating content that are disturbing because they want to get likes, followers, and eventually monetization by the online platform.
- What are some challenges you faced in your work and how do you overcome them?
I think the biggest challenge that I have faced with my work. Let me start with, is it the school? I’m not going to talk about the school. The school has been really fluid. And what I mean fluid is we adapt. We’ve been adapting very easily. If we have a challenge where we’re going out there, I have a very robust team and we’re making progress.
And there’s a way the school is directed. We’re serving people who really want what we’re offering and they’re out there happy that we can take in their kids and offer them education. However, when it comes to serving girls and running the school, one of the things I have noticed is that not many parents realize how important it is for their daughters to have a responsible person interacting with them on a consistent basis.
When I started working with girls, I had this boot camp I would do three times a year and three days every holiday. But you know, I just got to the realization one time, I said, man, this is nine contacts a year out of 365. Before I will tell the child something reasonable, they’ve heard, so before I met the child in April, January, February, March, there’s online bombardment, friends bombardment, a whole lot of stuff. All right. I’m sitting down here sitting pretty, feeling cool that I’ve done something impactful, but I’ve not met the kids nearly enough.
Now, I have parents who feel like, don’t worry, it’s not really necessary. And kids are being bombarded. Kids are bombarded everywhere. But not many parents realize how much of this is going on.
In fact, there’s so much happening within a child’s mind, thoughts, ideas, unanswered questions, deduction, wrongful interpretations girls are going away with. And so I’m just in that place where I’m hoping that more parents will see the need to give their daughters access to people like myself to offer them mentoring.
People that can answer their questions on a monthly basis. People that provide them quality information that helps empower them to make responsible decisions whatever situations they find themselves in. And so how have I overcome them? I keep on educating. I’m doing videos. I’m hearing kids share their testimonies. I’m sharing feedback. I’m consistently showing up so that parents see the need.
Especially with creating products or services that are not mainstream. It’s easy for people to think that they’re not useful because we’ve not always had them. And so it’s always in my place to say, oh, it’s like this because we need to do this because these are all the things we could have prevented if we had this. And so we keep on showing up. We keep on educating. And by God’s grace, they’re finding us and they’re getting the value for accessing our services.
- Can you share success stories from your Body Smart Bundle for Girls and The 10/10 Girl Squad program, and what you hope to achieve through your work?
What are some success stories I can share from the Body Smart Girl Bundle for Girls and the 10 Over 10 Girls Squad, which is my online mentoring program? What do you hope to achieve through your work? Okay, one of the testimonies I’ve heard, the most recurring testimonies I’ve heard recently is the girls saying that they find me easy to listen to and they value what I say. That is a very powerful thing for me because it’s not about throwing information at kids. Can they take it and meditate on it? And that’s my goal.
That’s something I say or something I do leaves a mark and they can meditate on it. They can think about it again and they can put it to use. So the biggest thing I’ve heard is, oh, I’m easy to listen to and they love to listen to me. I remember this one time we had a network challenge and so I couldn’t come on Zoom for a particular class.
And this particular princess, she was in the three to five year old class. I said, oh, mommy, I wanted to hear her voice today. And in that moment, I was like, this has to be God because, I mean, just for a child to want to listen to you, that’s special.
The second testimony we’ve had, which is also recurring a lot, is girls talking about their self-esteem boost. Now, I have a strategy for telling people that you don’t go around telling girls, believe in yourself, believe in yourself, just like that. You give them something to think about. You give them something to do and they look at their capacity being expressed and a little ounce of worth steps into their heart and they get the, you know, the ascribed value to something they did and they continue to grow from that. I’ve seen girls who said they were timid, they couldn’t talk to people and they’ve been able to come.
Another testimony I’ve seen is girls saying, I understand this puberty thing better. I understand this body safety thing better. I’m going to do this. I’m going to choose purity. I’m going to choose honoring God and thanks to the way Princess Irene put it, you know, and that for me is very special. So what do I hope to achieve? For me, the biggest motivation for my work is a sentence and it says, she will know what to do.
My biggest motivation is to raise a generation of girls who have healthy self-esteem, who honor God with everything and not in the religious term or in the religious way. Girls who would face situations and know exactly what to do. Whether it’s to pray, call for support, whether it’s to recalibrate, but they will not make hasty decisions, they will not make regrettable decisions and I’m talking about whether their parents are with them or not.
Girls who would know when to call the authorities, what to do, how to keep safe, how to regulate their emotions that they can like someone and know that that person is not safe for them and just stay away. Girls who, it’s just simple, girls who know what to do. And so every time I sit down to design lessons for the 10 of the 10 girls squad, what comes to mind is when she goes through this lesson and experiences this, this, this, she will know what to do. That’s what I hope to achieve and for me, it’s shaping the future of African females.
And while I’m starting with personal decision-making, my biggest dream is to see more girls knowing that they can thrive in corporate spaces. I want to reduce, I want to contribute significantly to increasing the spaces that women interact in, in corporate Africa and probably Fortune 500 globally with the presence of melanin-popping girls from Africa in all sectors. Education, entertainment, religion, tech, STEM, whatever it is, more girls participating, more girls knowing that they can do, they have potential and that’s really a driving factor.
I don’t know if you’ve ever come across any information or data that tells you that when girls start out, they believe that they’re the best all the way until they’re seven and eight and they start to doubt themselves.
So I want to be that person right there saying, no, let’s keep going. We’re going to keep believing in ourselves and this is why, this is you, this was you who did this, you did this, you did this and you got this and you can run for office and you can start a business, you can lead an organization, you can become the president of a multinational, you can do all of these things.
And with that, it won’t just be something you wish but I would have built in your leadership skills, leadership qualities, leadership thinking from when you were age three. So when you step in those spaces, you will know that you were prepared for such a time as this.
- What are the tips and advice you give to an aspiring teen and girls coach?
You have something to offer. Alright, dig deep to find what your convictions are. Why are you doing this? Why did you set out to be a teen or a girls coach? Narrow into that experience, build around that experience, get as much trainings as you can and step out there and put your voice out there. We’re not nearly enough to coach the next generation of girls and here is the thing, there are girls who would recognize my voice and there are girls who would recognize yours.
So my voice should never make you feel intimidated because you have space, you have space to express your voice and then your girls will respond to you. Here’s the thing, there are millions of girls not all called to me, many of them called to many other coaches. We all have to step out, take the stand, raise our voice, speak out there so that the girls that are connected to us can recognize our voice.
- What message would you like to share with girls, parents and educators about supporting the next generation’s growth and wellbeing?
I always like to put it this way, there’s going to be a point in my life that the people that shape my kids the most may not be me and so my work is to make the values that I want to stay in the world mainstream. So how can I get self-worth, self-honor, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-respect mainstream? How can I get it mainstream?
So that’s why I do what I do and so I want to encourage everyone that for every one person who got better because of an advice you gave, a counsel you shared, a listening ear you gave, you essentially made the next generation better and one day the next generation would serve you. And so it’s been my honor doing this interview. Thank you for the invitation. I do hope my answers meet your goals. Thank you for inviting me Gutsy woman.