Since its inception in 2001, the South Saharan Social Development Organization has become a viable platform for many young women and men to learn about and explore their femininity in a non-destructive, reinforcing and respectful manner that empowers them to exploit their full citizenship. Recognising that full citizenship can only be achieved through economic, political and social independence, SSDO also provides women with a set of financial and non financial services and tools to strengthen their skills and income and minimise their interest in anti-social activities. 

Structure
SSDO began as an empowerment organization for young women. The original aim was to help young women develop positive images of themselves and appreciate being women. This was in response to the low self esteem and image many Nigerian girls, especially from the South-east of the Country had of themselves and womanhood in general which was putting them at risk of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. With time it became obvious that a major part of the girls’ low self esteem came from their economic disempowerment. Without incomes of their own, the girls were totally dependent on their male household members, boyfriends or “sugar daddies.” This made SSDO to add its credit facilities to the programme. We are also beginning to train the young women on Computer skills as about 70% of them do not know how to use a computer.

Vision
To make development happen for women and men in Nigeria

Mission
To empower women socially and economically to be able to take advantage of their full citizenship
                                       
We, however, realized that without meaning to, our approach was becoming very top down, with us providing all the “answers.” This approach had to change if our aim was to help these young women take control over their lives. This led to a total overhaul of how our programme is organized. First we introduced the Open space workshops where the young women come to learn from each other and provide feedback on how they want SSDO to serve them. It was through the Open space workshop that we learnt of the young women’s need to interact with role models resulting in the introduction of the Role Model Sessions.

The Open Space workshops also made us aware of the enormous burden young women bear in trying to live up to the new standards we were setting for them within a community that held tenaciously to old values for women. This led us to introducing the Being comfortable and safe with the opposite sex workshops. These mixed workshops were more like “therapy sessions” where the girls and boys learnt to listen to each other’s facts, misconceptions and stereotypes and together negotiate how women and men can work together in more mutually respectful and beneficial ways. This also led to the anti-rape concert organized in the University of Abuja. To have a greater impact on the community, we introduced the Reaching out Programme, where our young women go into the communities and schools to educate them on various social issues.

Since it’s restructuring SSDO is organised thus: To plan its programmes, SSDO’s members meet at the beginning of the year to decide on major programmes to hold. Responsibilities are then assigned to members to make the activities possible. Thereafter, members meet monthly to decide on what specific activities to hold. If the activities are more than can be handled, voting takes place and the activities that do not “win” are deferred to the next month unless there is an overwhelming majority that do not want the activity at all. To ensure that all members are committed to SSDO, an annual membership fee of N1,000 ($7) is charged each member. Members also have to contribute to workshops either in the form of refreshments, exercise papers, pens, finding free venues, etc. Because of SSDO method of making member active in designing and running its activities, it is a very cheaply run organisation, whose activities far outweigh its budget. A dollar goes a much longer way in SSDO than in most other organisations.