It is 4 P.M. on a quiet Sunday afternoon in the green, tranquil city of Calabar, Nigeria. Just down the road from the Glee Cafe and the Agape Bookstore, 37 teenage girls are "checking in" with their peers in the Girls' Power Initiative. These young women, in what has become a Sunday afternoon ritual, are sharing experiences from the week that's passed.

"I'm feeling fine because I was healthy during the week," reports one young woman named Josephine. She goes on to say that her sister recently said that girls who wear short skirts are "calling for rape." How did Josephine react to this statement? "I set my sister straight. Rape is violence and boys will rape no matter what is worn. What about boys who wear short skirts?" When she finishes speaking, the others cheer and clap, and another girl stands to tell her story.

So begins another remarkable meeting of the Girls' Power Initiative (GPI), a program launched in 1993 to build the self-esteem of young Nigerian women by giving them information about reproductive health and rights -- and by teaching them to speak up about what they want or don't want when it comes to sex. To this end, GPI runs programs like this one that takes place on Sundays, holds public workshops, and provides the GPI curriculum in several schools in Calabar, a city with a population of 500,000 located about 50 kilometers from the Cameroon border in southeast Nigeria. GPI also operates a program in Benin City in the southwestern part of the country. As many as 500 young women, ages 8 to 19, are GPI members; hundreds more attend in GPI programs held in classrooms; and thousands have access to GPI's unique blend of information and empowerment through a quarterly newsletter, Girls' Power.

What makes GPI extraordinary above all is the fact that it exists in Nigeria, where the vast majority of young women are trained to be subservient to their parents, their brothers and the husbands they are expected to wholly serve. Although the number of Nigerian women professionals is increasing, and women have greater access to higher education and senior positions in academia, law and some private companies, the traditional Nigerian girl's upbringing of submission and acceptance persists throughout the country. It is especially strong in the country's expansive rural areas. GPI's commitment to frank discussions of issues of reproduction, women's health and rights, domestic violence, and male-female relationships is highly unusual -- even controversial. The group has, on occasion, been accused of corrupting young women, encouraging them to be sexually active, or making them "too bold" to find good husbands.

"If you ask girls, 'What is your name?', their head is down," says GPI founder and co-coordinator Dr. Bene E. Madunagu, a highly respected international advocate for women's reproductive and sexual health and rights. "When you ask the girls, 'What rights do you have as a human being?', the girls almost always are blank, or they say, 'A right to live, to eat well, to education.' No one thinks about the right to their health, especially girls."

According to Dr. Madunagu, who heads the program in Calabar, GPI works to provide girls with critical information they otherwise wouldn't have, and then, as the name indicates, empowers them to make their own informed decisions about their health and lives. The larger goal is for these young women to gain the self-confidence and self-knowledge to attain their potential in education, careers, motherhood and relationships -- in a way they choose. "We don't teach, but share," Madunagu says. "They have the power to take their life into their own hands through information. The information is powerful."

Madunagu founded GPI four years ago in partnership with Grace Osakue, a school administrator in Benin City who is, like Dr. Madunagu, a national and international advocate for women's health and rights. They started with an idea and a strong vision. "We wanted to catch the girls when they are young, teach them differently, socialize them differently, give them different information -- factual information -- in a non-judgmental way," says Madunagu. Starting from where these girls are, GPI's goal is to "make them look beyond: 'Must it always be like this? Could it be different? What could be different? What can we do to make it different?'"

Working work a handful of colleagues, Madunagu gathered a group of nine adolescent girls together, including her own daughter, now 15, for the first Girls' Power Initiative meeting in July 1994 in Calabar. "The nine girls went back to tell their friends, and we continued increasing," Madunagu recalls. In the southwest, Grace Osakue started with seven girls, and has also seen substantial and sustained growth in the program.

The International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), based in New York, has played a key role in GPI's development ever since the idea for it was first conceived. IWHC gave GPI its first seed grant and immediately furnished technical assistance. Andrea Irvin, IWHC's former Africa Program Officer, provided Dr. Madunagu with strategic advice on program design; just as importantly, she was the founder's sounding board. "There was so much encouragement from Andrea for GPI -- a lot," says Madunagu. "In fact, the critique of Andrea of my reports, the questions that she raises on my proposals, my goodness -- these are the things that help to sharpen my thoughts and give me a clearer vision and mission of what GPI is all about."

Another critical component of IWHC support is furnishing factual, scientific and advocacy materials on women's health and rights -- information that is not available in Nigeria and most other parts of Africa. This literature has been vital for both GPI facilitators and the girls who attend the gatherings and take part in the classroom curricula. IWHC materials make Madunagu feel that "We are just on top of the world.".

Over the past year, GPI young women have held public education events on violence against women, AIDS, women's rights; they even staged a dramatic production called "Sex Is Not Love." Although opposition to these events has been minimal, Madunagu says that all public activities are introduced with the statement: "GPI is just making a little contribution to what our government agreed at recent world conferences in Cairo and Beijing. "This reassures parents that the government knows about these things," she explains. In fact, federal and state libraries get Girls' Power and even ask for extra copies.

Young women around Nigeria read Girls' Power and write to Madunagu with questions or for advice. Answering the mounting volume of correspondence keeps her up late many nights, but Madunagu says it is worth it if she can help girls see and live their lives differently. One recent letter came from a girl who lives in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, but who had gone to GPI Sunday meetings while on vacation with her family in Calabar. The girl was susequently the victim of a gang rape by teenage boys in a school library. Her family, she wrote, is mostly men, so she didn't feel she could talk to anyone about the rape. On a recent trip to Lagos, Madunagu went to see the girl, counseled her not to feel shame over the rape, and urged her to report it to the legal authorities -- something most women are reluctant to do since rape cases are heard in open courts and often bring blame and scorn to victims. GPI is now beginning work with the Nigerian women lawyer's association to try and get rape hearings and trials moved to the privacy of judges' chambers.

GPI's greater goal is to encourage a new generation of strong, aware young Nigerian women to take their destinies into their own hands, and in the long-term, change the lives and perceived roles of women -- and men -- in their country. "We are raising girls who will begin to think differently on gender issues," Madunagu says. "This is the nucleus of a collection of feminists who can address the issues in more concrete ways. GPI will be the training ground for this."

Regarding GPI's remarkable growth, Madunagu says: "I think I was quite voracious in my idea, and it paid off." Each Sunday, more and more girls arrive at GPI's suite of green offices, in a quiet lane off a busy street. Some are as young as 8, often sisters of older girls in the program, who learn age-appropriate lessons about self-esteem and reproductive health.

Madunagu eventually would like to make Girls' Power Initiative a national program, but funding constraints and the difficulty of finding and training staff, including those who are not judgmental about adolescents, make this a long-term goal. Still, she has found ways to spread the word about women's health and rights to broader audiences. GPI's school program is expanding, and could be in as many as 15 schools by year's end. At a recent meeting between GPI staff and school principals, the program's expansion was strongly urged by both school officials and parents.

At the Sunday GPI meeting, Josephine's tale of the disagreement she and her sister had about what causes rape has led to a group discussion among the young women, moderated by Eka Bassey, one of GPI's adult facilitators. Bassey asks for definitions of rape and why men rape. One young woman says that it is not about what girls wear. Bassey asks the others whether they support or oppose this idea. Ruth opposes. "A girl should be cautious and dress modestly," she says. Eka discusses the need to be aware of appropriate dress. "Consider where you are going," she suggests, "but ways of dressing should not lead to rape." Bassey adds that young women do need to protect themselves from being harassed and avoid potentially dangerous situations. As Dr. Madunagu warns, "In Nigeria, we have a saying: 'No bottle of Coke is free."

The GPI curriculum defines rape as sexual acts without consent, no matter whether it is with a boyfriend, or whether there is "sweet talk" associated with it. GPI training on rape prevention includes practical tips on how to prepare for dates: don't take short cuts that lead into alleys or dark, desolate places; share expenses on dates; and perhaps most importantly, you do not have to have sex with your boyfriend to prove you love him. About sex, GPI tells girls that just saying no doesn't work. Instead, the girls are given factual information on sex and sexuality, including contraception, helping them make choices for themselves, Madunagu says. Some delay sexual activity, some start it. "They don't abstain from sex because we told them to abstain," she says, "but because they have the information."

Madunagu tells the story of a GPI girl who went to the chemist's shop to buy condoms. The man behind the counter said he wouldn't sell them to anyone "underage," and when the girl asked what underage was, he said "30". "How do you know I'm not over 30, and I will have the condoms," she asserted. He sold her the condoms. A young woman expressing such confidence and determination about so intimate a topic is, Madunagu submits, "like something out of the blue -- something you would never think of in our society."

This particular Sunday falls just before Valentine's Day, which is increasingly celebrated in Nigeria. Roadside vendors sell elaborate cards that cost half a day's pay. After checking in, the young women, and another group of 50 Girls' Power Initiative girls ages 10 to 14, explore what true love is. From group work and interactive games, they come up with this definition: devotion, sacrifice, not expecting too much, caring, understanding of mistakes, accepting faults, non-abuse of physical sex, affection, discussing matters over, sex, and settling misunderstandings.

Eka Bassey begins another discussion. "What is the test of true love?" she asks the young women. "Do you talk about things? Does he listen to you? Do you talk about how you feel? Does he say, "That's your GPI talk?' when you discuss protection from pregnancy and disease?" The young women then, in what is surely as rare an occurrence in the U.S. as it is in this quiet corner of Nigeria, share their ideas about intimacy, trust, abuse, and respect for their own and their partner's freedom. The group concludes that "real love takes time."

The true measure of a program like GPI is, of course, the changes that have taken place in the girls themselves. Many of the teenage girls now speak with either a quiet or a more robust confidence; those who are shy at first gain strength from the encouragement of their peers. Some of the younger girls are quite withdrawn, but GPI facilitators employ inventive ways -- interactive dialogues, games, and group work -- to draw them out, making them to feel that their ideas and opinions matter. Madunagu plans to undertake a full-scale evaluation of the GPI program in the coming year, but the evidence so far is that the program is launching a peaceful, but potentially powerful, revolution.

After the meeting, facilitators ask their groups what they have learned. This Sunday, one girl, about 12 years old, answers, "The difference between love and infatuation." An older GPI girl says she was asked by a teenage boy to be friends, and she asked, "What kind of friendship?" Surprised, he answered, "You know, girlfriend, boyfriend, sex." She replied, "If that's the kind of friendship, I am not ready for it." Boys, including this one, often ask: "Why do they [GPI girls] ask all those questions?"

Madunagu's over-arching goal remains unshaken: the political and social empowerment of Nigerian women, who "will not wait to be nominated to be a Commissioner, but who will on their own recognition achieve what it is they have envisioned to achieve." With Nigeria's youngest generation, on a quiet street in a quiet city, such empowerment is becoming raucously real. "Girls now go beyond just saying, "Oh, I want to be a nurse; oh I want to be a teacher",'" Madunagu reports, "to saying, "oh, I'm very good in physics, chemistry, math, so I think I want to do medicine, or I think I want to do engineering.'"

On the terrace that comes off of GPI's offices, the Sunday meeting is wrapping up. Facilitators tell the teenage group and the younger girls that they have learned a lot from them, and ask for feedback about what they as facilitators could do better. Before lining up to receive their transport allowance -- an important part of the program that allows poorer girls to participate -- each group joins in the three verses of the "Women's Decade" anthem, first sung at the Nairobi Women's Conference in 1985. Rising from the green rooms above the verdant city, the girls' voices are strong and hopeful.