Equip yourself to end FGM — one community at a time
A courageous, evidence-based school giving advocates, educators, and healthcare professionals the knowledge, dialogue tools, and digital strategies to protect girls, shift cultural norms, and build movements that last.
"Every girl deserves an advocate who is informed, courageous, and prepared — and that is exactly what I am here to help you become."— David Clilverd
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Explain the anatomy and physiology of female genitalia — including the role of the clitoris in sexual health, pleasure, and well-being — with accurate, confidence-building language.
- Describe the physical, psychological, and long-term health harms caused by FGM and articulate these clearly to community members, health workers, and decision-makers.
- Apply proven community-based education strategies — including storytelling, peer-to-peer outreach, and trusted-elder engagement — to begin shifting cultural norms around FGM.
- Leverage social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, and streaming) to design and distribute culturally sensitive anti-FGM awareness content that reaches global and local audiences.
- Facilitate courageous conversations with families, religious leaders, and male hierarchies using evidence, empathy, and non-confrontational dialogue frameworks.
- Build or join a resilient advocacy network — linking NGOs, media partners, health organisations, and survivor voices — to sustain long-term, community-owned progress against FGM.
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 18 lessons
Understanding FGM: Facts, Scope, and Why It Persists
This foundational module establishes a shared, evidence-based understanding of what FGM is, how widespread it is, and the deep cultural, social, and structural forces that sustain it. It must come first to give learners a common language and conceptual grounding before any anatomy, advocacy, or dialogue work begins.
- 1.1Defining FGM: Types, Prevalence, and Global RealityIncluded
- 1.2The Cultural Roots of FGM: Norms, Power, and IndoctrinationIncluded
- 1.3Legal and Human Rights FrameworksIncluded
Female Anatomy, Sexual Health, and the True Cost of FGM
Placed second — after context is established but before harm-centred advocacy begins — this module builds the anatomical literacy and health knowledge that underpin all subsequent modules. Learners develop confident, accurate, shame-free language about female genitalia and understand how FGM causes irreversible physical and psychological harm. This knowledge is both a personal empowerment tool and the evidence base for community education.
- 2.1Female Genital Anatomy: Confident, Accurate LanguageIncluded
- 2.2The Clitoris, Sexual Pleasure, and Women's Well-beingIncluded
- 2.3The Physical and Psychological Harms of FGMIncluded
Community Education Strategies That Actually Work
With foundational knowledge and anatomical literacy in place, this module equips learners with proven, field-tested community education methodologies. It covers storytelling, peer outreach, trusted-elder engagement, and the critical — often neglected — work of engaging men and religious leaders. Sequenced here as the bridge between knowledge and action, it prepares learners for the more advanced dialogue and network-building work ahead.
- 3.1The Power of Storytelling and Survivor VoicesIncluded
- 3.2Peer-to-Peer Outreach and Trusted-Elder EngagementIncluded
- 3.3Engaging Men, Religious Leaders, and Power StructuresIncluded
Digital Media and Content Creation for Anti-FGM Advocacy
This module teaches learners to harness social media platforms — YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, streaming, and emerging platforms — to design and distribute culturally sensitive anti-FGM content at scale. It is sequenced after community strategies because effective digital content must be rooted in community insight; learners who skip straight to digital risk creating content that alienates the very audiences they want to reach.
- 4.1Understanding Your Digital Audience and Platform StrategyIncluded
- 4.2Creating Culturally Sensitive Anti-FGM ContentIncluded
- 4.3Distribution, Amplification, and Measuring ImpactIncluded
Facilitated Dialogue: Courageous Conversations for Norm Change
Equipped with knowledge, community strategies, and digital tools, learners now develop the interpersonal skills to facilitate difficult real-world conversations — with resistant families, religious leaders, and male hierarchies — using evidence, empathy, and non-confrontational dialogue frameworks. A previously missing lesson on facilitating safe spaces specifically for women and girls is included as an essential complement to engagement with power structures. This module also adds the missing prerequisite of facilitator self-awareness and trauma-informed practice.
- 5.1Facilitator Self-Awareness and Trauma-Informed PracticeIncluded
- 5.2Dialogue Frameworks for Resistant CommunitiesIncluded
- 5.3Facilitating Safe Spaces for Women and GirlsIncluded
Building a Resilient Advocacy Network to Sustain Change
The final module shifts from individual skills to collective, systemic action. Learners build or join advocacy networks that link NGOs, media partners, health organisations, government actors, and survivor voices into a coordinated, community-owned movement. The draft curriculum's self-care lesson is expanded and reframed as 'Advocacy Sustainability and Self-Care' to address activist burnout — a real and well-documented risk in this field. A new lesson on monitoring, evaluation, and celebrating progress closes the course with accountability and hope.
- 6.1Mapping and Building Your Advocacy NetworkIncluded
- 6.2Advocacy Sustainability, Self-Care, and Activist Well-beingIncluded
- 6.3Monitoring Progress, Celebrating Milestones, and Sustaining Long-Term ChangeIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Community educators
You work with families and local groups and need evidence-based frameworks, cultural dialogue tools, and real storytelling strategies you can use tomorrow.
NGO & humanitarian workers
You need a rigorous, deployable curriculum to strengthen your organisation's field programmes and connect with a wider advocacy network.
Healthcare professionals
You need confident, accurate language around female anatomy and FGM's clinical harms so you can educate patients and colleagues with authority and care.
Social workers & child protection officers
You work on the front line with at-risk girls and families and need practical dialogue frameworks and legal knowledge to act with confidence.
Journalists & content creators
You want to cover FGM responsibly and powerfully — and to build digital content and platform strategies that shift public opinion without causing harm.
Women in FGM-affected communities
Whether a survivor or an advocate from within, you are ready to turn lived experience and community trust into meaningful, lasting protection for the next generation.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
David Clilverd
If you are reading this, you already know something is wrong — and you already care enough to do something about it. Maybe you work with communities where FGM is still practised and you have felt the weight of not knowing quite what to say, or how to say it in a way that people will actually hear. Maybe you are a health professional who has sat with a patient and felt the limits of your knowledge. Maybe you are a woman who has lived this, and you are done with silence.
I built this school for you.
Ending FGM is not a simple task. It asks us to hold two truths at once: that culture is real, that community belonging matters, that people are not monsters for doing what their mothers and grandmothers and communities have always done — and that none of that changes the fact that every girl has the absolute right to her own body, her own health, and her own sexuality. This school does not flatten that complexity. It teaches you to work inside it — with empathy, with evidence, and with moral clarity.
What you will find here is practical. You will learn how to talk about female anatomy and sexual health with confidence and accuracy — because you cannot advocate for something you cannot name. You will learn what the research actually says about the harms of FGM, and how to communicate that in ways that reach a mother's heart, not just her head. You will learn the community education strategies that have already changed minds and protected girls — storytelling, elder engagement, peer outreach, courageous conversations with men and religious leaders — and you will practise them in ways you can deploy the moment you finish a lesson.
The digital world is also part of this fight, and Module 4 will equip you to use it. YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, streaming — the girls who need protection are in communities that are online, and so are the people whose minds can be changed. You will learn to create content that is culturally sensitive and strategically targeted, and to build the networks that amplify it.
One more thing: this work is hard, and it can cost you. Module 6 includes lessons on advocacy sustainability, activist well-being, and self-care — because a burned-out advocate cannot protect anyone. You matter in this movement, not just as a vehicle for the work, but as a human being who deserves to sustain.
You do not have to have all the answers before you begin. You just have to be willing to begin. I will walk with you every step of the way.
— David Clilverd
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- 6 modules, 18 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed