The “EmpowerHer Media Initiative” is an empowerment facing project in the critical area of media and gender in Africa implemented in 2024 by the development Research and projects Center (dRPC) and funded by the United States (US) Mission in Nigeria which builds upon and leverages the findings from the dRPC’s 2-year ALIGN study on gender norms in Nigeria. The program is a gender transformative intervention aimed to build the capacities of media practitioners on the use of gender transformative language in media coverage of women and girls in Nigeria. This project targets the male dominated media houses of leading Hausa and English language establishments to transform the existing negative personal and institutional gender biases in media reporting through training and mentoring to a gender transformative language in 3 northern Nigeria states Adamawa, Jigawa and Niger.
The anticipated impact of the “EmpowerHer Media Initiative” is the transformation of negative gender societal norms by leveraging the power of leading local media houses and their practitioners to tell stories, shape opinion and present positive narratives and optics of women and girls. This will be achieved through 

• Increased capacity building of media editors, sub-editors, journalists and media houses to seek out, investigate and report on stories on women and girls in which gender transformative language is used in both English and Hausa to tell stories challenging negative gender norms of society. 
• Development, adaptation and operationalize of a Gender Transformative Code of Reporting (GTCoR) to guide media practitioners
• Expanding the pool of female media practitioners through a mentorship program in collaboration with mass communication and Linguistics programs in state Universities, especially the American University of Adamawa State.