Hi, I’m
MELODY SOLOMON
Yola town
Summary
Experienced Gender, Protection, Safeguarding and PSEAH practitioner with over 7 years in designing and implementing programmes in sexual and reproductive health rights, GBV in emergencies, and child protection. Leads gender-transformative approaches and safeguarding systems, fostering inter-agency coordination among INGOs and local partners in Nigeria. Focuses on capacity building, policy development, and survivor-centred responses.
Overview
1
Certification
6
years of professional experience
Work History
Plan International Nigeria
Gender Equality and Social inclusion officer
2025.05 - Current (1 education.year_Label & 4 education.months_Label)
Job overview
- Developed and rolled out a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion strategy, increasing female participation in community health dialogues.
- Integrated gender equality and inclusion across a SRHR program reaching over 25,000 adolescents and young women in Sokoto and Bauchi states, ensuring services addressed barriers for persons with disabilities, young people, and marginalized groups.
- Trained 120+ health workers and peer educators on gender-responsive SRHR service delivery, informed consent, and non-discriminatory care.
- Led stakeholder engagement with Ministry of Health, women's Rights groups, and youth networks to co-design adolescent-friendly SRHR interventions.
- Integrated gender transformative approach in demand and supply-side interventions of Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Child Protection (CP) programming, contributing to project goals.
- Established referral pathways linking SRHR clients to GBV and mental health services, enhancing client access to comprehensive care.
- Supported project engagements with government and non-governmental partners on gender equality and inclusion issues, addressing challenges of vulnerable children, forced early marriage, early pregnancy, and gender-based violence.
- Led implementation of PSEA policy across 3 field offices, ensuring all staff, partners, and volunteers completed mandatory training and signed codes of conduct.
- Established accessible complaint and feedback mechanisms for reporting SEAH, increasing community reporting by 50% through trusted channels.
- Conducted risk assessments and developed mitigation plans for high-risk activities, reducing safeguarding incidents by 30% year-on-year.
- Supported investigations and victim/survivor assistance referrals in line with inter-agency SOPs and victim/survivor-centered principles.
- Represented organization in inter-agency PSEA Network meetings, contributing to Nigeria-wide action plans and awareness campaigns.
Plan International NigeriaAdamawa
Gender Based Violence & Child Protection Officer
2024.07 - 2025.04 (9 education.months_Label)
Job overview
- Managed GBV and child protection case management for 600+ survivors in IDP and host communities, ensuring adherence to IASC GBV guidelines and a survivor-centred approach.
- Coordinated multi-sector response with health, psychosocial support, legal, and shelter actors to reduce response time from 72 to 24 hours.
- Managed casework and provided support for survivors of GBV and child protection concerns.
- Built capacity of 105 + Clinical and non-clinical service providers on responding to survivors of RAPE and GBV.
- Built capacity of 80+ frontline staff on safe identification, referral, and psychosocial first aid, enhancing support for children and GBV survivors.
- Designed and facilitated community-based prevention programs on child marriage, FGM, and positive parenting, engaging 5,000+ community members.
- Coordinated needs assessments on child protection and GBV, mapping priority protection gaps and identifying key resources using CPiE Rapid Assessment tools.
- Led data analysis and reporting to GBVIMS and CPIMS+, guiding program adaptation and strengthening donor reports.
- Monitoring of CFS and WGSS activities and support supervision and coaching of safe spaces facilitators; workers, PSS volunteers, and Community Based Child Protection Champions/groups.
- Ensure the functionality of the community-based child protection committees.
- Identified and utilized referral systems for education, psychosocial support, NFIs, nutrition, and food security within CP/GBV projects.
- Facilitated training sessions for community-based child protection committees (CBCPCs).
- Provide day-to-day mentoring and coaching to caseworkers on case management activities.
- Organised training sessions for staff to improve skills and capacity building for staff and stakeholders.
- Implemented safeguarding initiatives to enhance community protection efforts and ensured compliance with policies.
- Collaborated with partners and communities to promote safeguarding.
Plan International NigeriaAdamawa
GBV/Child protection CASE Manager
2022.05 - 2024.06 (2 education.years_Label & 1 education.month_Label)
Job overview
- Providing the day-to-day case management of all GBV cases and including the identification, documentation, developing case plans using GBViMS+ (Primero).
- Implementation of action plans, follow up and case closure processes in line with the GBV case management standard operating procedure and IASC guidelines on case management (SOP).
- Ensuring that Survivor Centereded Approach Guiding principles are maintained and enforced while working with survivors including in safe spaces for women and girls.
- Provide direct support and care for vulnerable women and girls (including survivors of gender-based violence) including basic information counselling and case management services.
- Liaised with service providers in LGA and communities to facilitate referrals for health, mental health, shelter, NFIs, and legal services.
- Mapping up service providers and developing robust referral pathways.
- Ensuring regular update of case management data on GBVIMS+ with support from GBVIMS Assistant.
- Conducted service mapping in implementation community to identify partner presence and available services.
- Facilitating the setting up of information desk at the women and girls centre where adolescent and women of reproductive age can access Sexual Reproductive Health information.
- Carrying out education and information sharing on SRHR and GBV to community members.
- Ensuring Do No Harm analysis are carried out and the principle of Do No Harm is observed and upheld in all the engagements.
- Facilitating life skills sessions for adolescent boys and girls and Positive parenting sessions for caregivers/parents.
- Identified local capacity gaps to strengthen community support for GBV services and assess GBV risks and vulnerabilities.
- In collaboration with SBMC members conduct back to school campaign at the beginning of each term. This is to encourage children especially girls to go back to school.
- Performed assigned tasks under supervisor direction.
Life All Round Human Development Initiative
PSHEA & Safeguarding officer
2020.06 - 2021.10 (1 education.year_Label & 4 education.months_Label)
Job overview
- Operationalised safeguarding policies across 4 project sites, ensuring compliance with organisational and donor safeguarding standards for 120+ staff and partners.
- Conducted safeguarding risk assessments for outreach and community engagement activities, developing mitigation plans that reduced safeguarding-related incidents by 25% in 12 months.
- Facilitated mandatory safeguarding training for all new staff, volunteers, and contractors, achieving 100% compliance within onboarding timelines.
- Managed and promoted safe reporting channels, training community focal points on confidential intake and referral procedures for SEAH and child protection concerns, enhancing community trust in reporting mechanisms.
- Coordinated with senior management to address safeguarding breaches, providing documentation support, survivor referrals, and disciplinary follow-up that reinforced compliance with policy.
- Monitored partner safeguarding capacity through spot checks and mentoring, reinforcing safeguarding systems of 8 local NGOs and improving overall compliance.
Education
Ahmadu Bello UniversityZaria, KD
Master of Science from Disaster Risk Management
2028-01
University Overview
- [Msc] in view
Adamawa State University Mubi
Bachelor of Science from Geography
2016-01
University Overview
- [Degree] Graduate
Skills
- Gender equality
- SRHR Programming
- GBV management
- Child Protection
- PSEA investigations
- Safeguarding compliance
- Safeguarding
- Capacity building
- Community Engagement
- Community mobilisation
- Stakeholder engagement
- Stakeholder collaboration
- Data analysis
- Risk assessment
- Project management
- Project prioritisation
- Case management
- Crisis intervention
- Training facilitation
- Induction training
- Monitoring
- Performance management
- Team Leadership
- Effective communication
- Communication proficiency
- Oral and written communication
- Public speaking
- Active listening
- Relationship-building
- Employee engagement
- Interview techniques
- Leadership development
- Strategic planning
- Critical-thinking
- Risk Management
- Excel proficiency
- Performance management
Referee
Available on Request
Certification
- Certificate in Humanitarian Environment individual safety training (HEIST) under INSO
- Certificate in Staff Safety and Security Awareness
- Primero/ Gender-Based Violence Information Management System 'Plus' (Primero/GBVIMS+)
- ITIL
- PSEA Course certificate - Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
- Certificate in Global Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Pathway (Humanitarian leadership academy)
- Certificate in case management of childhood illness USAID (Global Health eLearning Center)
Accomplishments
- Developed 2 Manuals SOPs for GBV referral and PSEA complaint referral adopted by Implementing partners and state Government in Sokoto state, Nigeria, improving case handoff time by 40%.
- Designed and delivered ToT programs on gender, GBV, child protection, and PSEA to 200+ staff and partners, with 92% post-training competency scores.
- Contributed technical inputs to state-level SRHR and child protection policy reviews in Adamawa, Yobe and Sokoto, resulting in inclusion of adolescent-friendly service standards.
- Established community-based feedback and complaint channels in 12 LGAs, increasing survivor-initiated reports of SEAH and GBV by 52% within 18 months.
- Led analysis of GBVIMS and CPIMS+ data to identify hotspot areas and adjust programming, reducing repeat incidents of child marriage in target communities by 28%.
- Represented the organization in the Nigeria PSEA Network and GBV Sub-Working Group, co-leading a state-level awareness campaign reaching 25,000 people.
- Conducted safeguarding audits across 4 partner organizations, supporting 2 partners to achieve full compliance with donor safeguarding standards within 9 months.
Custom
- Gender Equality & Social Inclusion
- SRHR Programming
- GBV Case Management & Prevention
- Child Protection
- PSEA Policy & Investigations
- Safeguarding
- Training & Capacity Building
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Community Engagement
Timeline
Gender Equality and Social inclusion officer
Plan International Nigeria
2025.05 - Current (1 education.year_Label & 4 education.months_Label)
Gender Based Violence & Child Protection Officer
Plan International Nigeria
2024.07 - 2025.04 (9 education.months_Label)
GBV/Child protection CASE Manager
Plan International Nigeria
2022.05 - 2024.06 (2 education.years_Label & 1 education.month_Label)
PSHEA & Safeguarding officer
Life All Round Human Development Initiative
2020.06 - 2021.10 (1 education.year_Label & 4 education.months_Label)
Ahmadu Bello University
Master of Science from Disaster Risk Management
Adamawa State University
Bachelor of Science from Geography