Lee Paiva

No Means No Worldwide

Big Idea: 

No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) teaches girls to defend themselves and boys to respect them. Their curriculum reduced sexual assault and school related pregnancy by 50% in the schools where they teach.

Lee first went to Africa in 2000 to help children orphaned by AIDS. Working in the slums of Nairobi, she learned that in a given year, each young woman and girl faced a 1 in 4 chance of rape. As a girl, Lee had experience violence and trauma in her home; she had to do something. NMNW is the result of her determination to share the defense skills that saved her own life with women and girls in high risk places.

Rainer Arnhold Fellows