The hope education project team
Mariama Adam - Programs Director
Mariama Adam is the Programs Director of the Hope Education Project (HEP) and a leading practitioner in community-based anti-trafficking education in Northern Ghana.
She led delivery the 2025 HEP pilot across Tamale’s junior high schools and led the rollout of the SOMA girls’ empowerment program in Gbolo Kpalsi. Her work has directly shaped how young people in the region learn about human trafficking, rights, online safety, and self-protection.
As a multilingual communicator fluent in Dagbani, English, and Twi, Mariama brings a deep understanding of the cultural and social dynamics that shape girls’ and young people’s lives in northern communities. She has become a trusted educator in schools, at community gatherings, within women’s groups, and across diverse faith settings. Her strength lies in taking complex issues – migration, exploitation, digital risk, consent, family pressure – and making them understandable and relevant to young audiences who may have limited literacy.
Before joining HEP, Mariama built a strong foundation in project leadership through roles with Theatre for Social Change, CAMFED Ghana, and the Child Liberty Foundation. She has managed field teams, trained facilitators, designed monitoring tools, and built partnerships with local institutions. These experiences now inform her work at HEP, where she blends structure, creativity, and deep community insight.
In 2025, Mariama co-led the development of the SOMA Initiative, a low-cost, high-impact empowerment model built around peer leadership, emotional resilience, sexual and reproductive health education, and digital safety. The model has already demonstrated early behaviour change among adolescent girls, and Mariama continues to shape its next phase with community mentors and local stakeholders.
Known for her calm authority, her integrity, and her ability to create safe spaces for girls, Mariama is a natural leader and a committed lifelong learner. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the International Open University in The Gambia. Her work is driven by a belief that when girls and young people are equipped with knowledge and confidence, they become powerful protectors of themselves, their peers, and their communities.
Wunzooya - Survivor Advocate
Wunzooya is a survivor advocate with the Hope Education Project based in Tamale, Northern Ghana. In 2014, she was trafficked from Tamale to Saudi Arabia for labour exploitation. Since returning home, Wunzooya has worked steadily to rebuild her life, reconnect with her family, and pursue her education. She is now married, raising her children, and studying for a degree in Child Psychology at university.
As part of the Hope Education Project team, Wunzooya shares her lived experience to raise awareness about trafficking risks in her community. She plays a vital role in delivering survivor testimonies during community sessions and advising on local program implementation. Wunzooya’s growing confidence and leadership have made her a powerful advocate for vulnerable women and girls in Tamale. Her commitment to storytelling, community education, and supporting other survivors exemplifies the spirit of resilience and hope that underpins the Hope Education Project’s mission to disrupt human trafficking at it’s source.
Luciana Miguel Chumacero - Monitoring and Evaluation Lead
Luciana Miguel Chumacero is the Monitoring and Evaluation Lead for Hope Education Project, Ghana. She is a human-centred monitoring and evaluation specialist operating at the cross-section of human trafficking and gender inequality.
Luciana’s work has taken her from the remote hinterlands of northern Nigeria to the mountains of the Bolivian Altiplano. In Nigeria, she engaged with survivors of human trafficking and conflict to assess long-term intervention impacts. In Bolivia, she worked directly with low-income indigenous women to evaluate the effectiveness of a development bank’s HPV prevention education programme.
Luciana brings both qualitative depth and quantitative rigour to her work. She is as comfortable deciphering patterns in numerical data as she is sitting with survivors in interviews – and it is the integration of these two approaches that defines her practice.
In Nigeria with ChildVoice, she built a new tool for measuring longitudinal behavioural change in beneficiaries, enabling the organisation to capture and track data it had previously considered out of reach. In Bolivia with CRECER IFD, she bridged the gap between theory and implementation to strengthen the reach and effectiveness of a community health education programme.
Luciana holds an MSc in Public Policy with a focus on Economic Development from the University of Manchester, and a BA in International Relations and Development from the University of Sussex.
She has worked with vulnerable communities throughout her career, drawn particularly to those facing exploitation and coercion. Contributing to the work of breaking those chains is what brought her to Hope Education Project.
Shaban Al-Hasan - Lead Facilitator
Shaban has worked in youth development and community education in Northern Ghana for over a decade. He led the facilitation of HEP’s school programme – the direct work with students that sits at the heart of what we do.
He brings a depth of field experience that is hard to manufacture. He has delivered life skills education across multiple regions of Ghana, trained peer educators, promoted digital literacy among girls, and run community outreach through theatre and drama. His work has taken him into schools, prisons, and rural communities across the north.
Before joining HEP, Shaban worked as Lead Facilitator for dance4life Ghana’s Heart Connection Tour, a Trainer of Trainers, and an ICT tutor for Girls Growth and Development. He holds certifications in Comprehensive Sexuality Education and has trained under Dance4Life International in Uganda.