Through the Samsung Global Goals app, my story became accessible on Samsung devices around the world. Every now and then, I receive messages from people I have never met; students, young advocates and strangers from countries I have never visited, telling me they came across my profile on the app and wanted to learn more about my work. There is something incredibly humbling about knowing that a girl from Northern Nigeria can be discovered by someone halfway across the world because they opened an app on their phone. There are some forms of visibility that money simply cannot buy.

The visibility opened many other doors. There were interviews, official UNDP features, blogs, consultations on the Human Development Report, engagements with the United Nations Youth Office and opportunities to contribute to global discussions on issues I care deeply about. 

One moment, however, stands above the rest. In early 2024, I travelled to South Africa to film my Generation17 Hero Story. Before filming began, I found myself coordinating the Social Impact Summit South Africa from Nigeria, working across countries, managing logistics, bringing people together and learning lessons about leadership that no classroom could have taught me.

How my journey begun

Returning to my secondary school in Kaduna changed me the most. It was at my secondary school that  I got my first period. I still remember the confusion, the shame and the embarrassment of staining my clothes without understanding what was happening to my body. It was a  moment that seemed small but quietly changed the direction of my life. It became the reason I would later dedicate my work to ensuring that no girl has to experience menstruation without information, dignity or support. 

Walking back into those same classrooms years later with cameras following my story felt almost impossible to describe. During filming, childhood photographs of me were spread across the room as we reflected on that journey. At one point, I found myself crying. So did members of the production team. It wasn't sadness so much as reflection. For me, it was about the progress I have made. For everyone else, it was the reminder that even our most painful experiences can become the foundation of purpose. That experience also deepened something I have come to believe with my whole heart: representation is not a personal achievement. It is a responsibility.

One of the greatest honours of my Generation17 journey was standing on a stage at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2024, to deliver closing remarks during the Summit of the Future Action Days, just a month before my twenty-fifth birthday. It was a goal I had quietly carried for years.

But standing there, I wasn't thinking about crossing something off a bucket list. I was thinking about the girls I work with. Girls who could not ever magine graduating because their communities do not value girls' education, girls I have watched use mattress foam in place of sanitary pads just to stay in school, girls who have lost friends to unsafe abortions because accurate information about their bodies never reached them, girls whose lives, like mine once was, are shaped by circumstances they did not choose.

The greatest gift Generation17 gave me; not the platforms themselves, but the confidence and space to imagine bigger possibilities for impact.