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SAGE Foundation Puts Child Marriage in Nigeria on Screen
SAGE Foundation's 'Just a Girl' is a 2022 documentary short film, directed by Yassa Khan of Camp Productions and edited by Sam Hopkins of Engine, filmed in Lagos, Nigeria, that gives voice to child brides who became mothers before the age of 18 and calls on audiences to sign a Change.org petition demanding legislative change.
SAGE Foundation is a United Kingdom-registered organisation founded and led by Naza Alakija, whose mission centres on supporting grassroots organisations that elevate and empower women and girls with access to quality education. 'Just a Girl' represents the foundation's most publicly visible creative undertaking to date, translating an ongoing humanitarian concern into a single, concentrated film asset distributed across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo from 6 April 2022. The campaign was developed in partnership with Camp Productions and Engine, two production and post-production entities whose combined contribution shaped both the visual language and the editorial rhythm of the finished work.
The film was made in Lagos, the city that serves as both a practical location and a symbolic centre of gravity for the campaign's argument. Nigeria carries one of the heaviest concentrations of child marriage anywhere in the world, and the decision to film there rather than construct the issue at a comfortable remove places the audience inside the geography of the problem. The young women who appear on screen are not actors. They are girls who were married before adulthood and who became mothers before they possessed the resources to raise a child, and each one expresses a desire to continue her education. Alongside their testimony, the film features women who are actively working to abolish the laws that permit child marriage to persist. The campaign partnered with the youth activist organisation It's Never Your Fault, setting a target of 500,000 signatures on a Change.org petition aimed at banning child marriage in Nigeria. The Clapboard Score for 'Just a Girl' is 63 out of 100.
Nigeria holds one of the largest concentrations of child brides of any country on earth. According to Girls Not Brides, more than 22 million girls in Nigeria have been married before the age of 18, making it one of the most urgent national contexts within a global crisis. Globally, according to UNICEF, approximately 12 million girls marry before the age of 18 each year, meaning the scale of the problem continues to compound even as awareness campaigns multiply. In the United Kingdom, where SAGE Foundation is based, public consciousness of child marriage as a legislative and development issue has grown, but the connection between domestic audiences and the lived realities of girls in Lagos has historically been difficult to sustain through conventional awareness formats.
Naza Alakija, Founder and CEO of SAGE Foundation, has articulated the organisation's core strategic conviction directly, stating that the most effective way to prevent child marriage is to keep girls in school and allow them to reach their potential, as reported by LBBonline. This belief shapes the campaign's architecture: rather than presenting child marriage as an abstract statistic, 'Just a Girl' grounds the issue in the specific educational aspirations of identifiable individuals filmed in Lagos. The petition mechanic — targeting 500,000 signatures in partnership with It's Never Your Fault — converts emotional engagement into a quantifiable legislative pressure point.
The campaign enters a space already occupied by the sustained advocacy work of organisations such as UNICEF and Save the Children, both of which have long-running child marriage programmes. Where those organisations command institutional scale, SAGE Foundation's approach competes on intimacy and creative specificity. The film does not attempt to survey the global problem; it stays in Lagos and lets the particularity of those stories carry the argument. In the United Kingdom, where foreign aid discourse and development fatigue can blunt the impact of large-scale campaigns, the documentary intimacy of 'Just a Girl' offers a more direct channel to audience empathy.
Director Yassa Khan of Camp Productions shaped 'Just a Girl' as a visceral documentary work, described in the film's own production notes as echoing the brutal and fragile nature of the subjects' stories through a kaleidoscope of melancholic visuals. The film does not adopt the distanced register of traditional charity advertising. Instead, it operates with the visual and editorial intimacy of contemporary documentary filmmaking, a choice that reflects both the sensibility of its director and the creative ambition of the agencies involved.
The production team assembled for the Lagos shoot represents a level of craft investment unusual for a single-asset public interest campaign. Director of photography Jed Darlington Roberts handled the visual capture, bringing the specific quality of Lagos light and domestic space into the frame. Colourist Adam Clarke shaped the grade in post, giving the film the melancholic visual register referenced in its own description. Composer Charlie Smith wrote the score, while sound mix was handled by Liam Conwell, both of whose contributions underpin the emotional pacing of the film. Lead editor Sam Hopkins of Engine assembled these elements into a film that, as shots noted in its April 2022 coverage, achieves a balance between showing the effects of child marriage and explaining to audiences how they can act.
Executive producer Naza Alakija and producer Hayley Shepherd oversaw the production, with Alakija's dual role as both the campaign's creative commissioner and the foundation's CEO giving the project an unusual degree of directorial coherence between institutional intent and screen execution. The film was distributed across social platforms from 6 April 2022, with the multi-platform release strategy — Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo — designed to reach audiences in the United Kingdom and beyond without relying on paid broadcast placement. Trade press coverage, including pieces in shots and LBBonline published in April 2022, confirmed the film's reception within the advertising and creative industries as a work of genuine emotional weight.
No independently verified performance data for the 'Just a Girl' campaign — including petition signatures reached, total video views, or media spend — is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign's declared objective was to reach 500,000 signatures on its Change.org petition, in partnership with It's Never Your Fault, aimed at legislating against child marriage in Nigeria. Whether that target was achieved has not been confirmed by SAGE Foundation, Camp Productions, Engine, or any of the trade outlets that covered the launch.
What the available record does confirm is that the campaign received positive trade press attention in the United Kingdom across three publications. Shots, writing on 7 April 2022, described the film as moving and informative and praised its structural balance between depicting the effects of child marriage and offering audiences a concrete action to take. LBBonline, reporting on 6 April 2022, covered the campaign launch, noting the Lagos filming location, the direction by Yassa Khan, and the editorial work of Sam Hopkins at Engine. ContentGrip, writing on 11 April 2022, also reported on the campaign. No coverage was recorded in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, or The Drum, which limits the campaign's measurable industry footprint.
Structurally, 'Just a Girl' is well-designed for its objective. The petition mechanic gives emotional engagement a direct exit into civic action. The documentary format, filmed in Lagos with real subjects rather than constructed scenarios, builds the credibility that petition-linked campaigns require to sustain sharing behaviour beyond an initial launch moment. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign with strong creative intent and meaningful subject matter that is constrained by limited distribution reach and an absence of verified outcome data.
'Just a Girl' is a 2022 documentary short film by SAGE Foundation, directed by Yassa Khan and filmed in Lagos, Nigeria. It features child brides who became mothers before age 18 and supports a Change.org petition seeking 500,000 signatures to ban child marriage in Nigeria. The campaign was published in the United Kingdom in April 2022.
Yassa Khan of Camp Productions directed the film. Khan led a full production team in Lagos that included director of photography Jed Darlington Roberts, colourist Adam Clarke, composer Charlie Smith, and sound mixer Liam Conwell. Lead editor Sam Hopkins of Engine cut the final film, as documented by LBBonline in its April 2022 coverage.
Nigeria is home to more than 22 million child brides, according to Girls Not Brides, making it one of the most acute national contexts for child marriage globally. Filming in Lagos placed the campaign's argument inside the geography of the problem rather than addressing it at a remove, a deliberate creative and strategic choice reflected in the film's documentary approach.
The campaign directed audiences to sign a Change.org petition targeting 500,000 signatures, in partnership with youth activist organisation It's Never Your Fault, calling for legislation to ban child marriage in Nigeria. Naza Alakija, Founder and CEO of SAGE Foundation, stated that keeping girls in school is the most effective way to prevent child marriage, as reported by LBBonline.
'Just a Girl' received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative intent, documentary craft, and meaningful subject matter, weighed against limited verified distribution data and an absence of publicly confirmed outcome metrics such as petition signatures or total video views across its social platform release.
Camp Productions and Engine created the campaign together. Camp Productions handled production, with Yassa Khan directing and Hayley Shepherd producing. Engine contributed post-production, with Sam Hopkins serving as lead editor. Executive producer Naza Alakija, who is also Founder and CEO of SAGE Foundation, oversaw the project, as documented in campaign production credits.
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