AHI advances this agenda by working with young people, parents, community opinion leaders, youth-serving organizations, government agencies and policy makers to:

• Promote and protect young people’s sexual and reproductive health especially, increasing their ability to prevent early pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS and making informed choices about their sexuality free of discrimination, coercion, and violence; as well as developing competencies to thrive now and in adulthood;
• Increase community awareness and action on challenges youth face so that policies and programmes are put in place to effectively address these issues; and
• Build alliances to increase the number of government, private sector, and civil society programmes offering support and life-enhancing opportunities for young people.

Over the last 34 years, AHI has worked to assure that both private and public sector programmes include comprehensive, gender-sensitive, life skills and rights-based approaches to sexuality education and clinical services for youths.  During this period, AHI has developed models that have been adopted and expanded by government and other civil society organizations. Some key accomplishments include:

• Successful advocacy for approval of the national education policy for universal access to sexuality education targeted at young people in Nigeria; and development of the National Family Life and HIV Education Curriculum for primary, secondary and tertiary levels in collaboration with education stakeholders.
• Facilitating the development of the Family Life and Emerging Health Issues Curriculum for Colleges of Education in Nigeria in collaboration with the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE)
• Catalyzing/operationalizing Youth-Friendly Health Services in partnership with stakeholders to promote young people’s access to age-appropriate, gender sensitive, sexual and reproductive health information and services in several states of Nigeria.
• Published reviews and situation analyses on the sexual and reproductive health of married adolescent girls in Northern Nigeria and expanding their access to services in four northern states including facilitating the return of married girls to school.
• Raising greater awareness about the vulnerabilities of out-of-school adolescent girls in the urban slums of Lagos and facilitating advocacy to improve policy and programming response.

AHI has received national and distinguished international awards in recognition of the impact of the organization’s work including the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) Award for Excellence & Innovation in Sexuality Education, and The MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.