Note: This article was published before the event it describes. Spark a Spectrum took place on April 2, 2026, reaching 84 centers across 31 countries with more than 2,000 volunteers.
I have been coordinating autism services internationally for more than a decade, and worked with volunteers and professionals across more than 50 countries. I know what effort looks like. Happiness Jonas Sarki stands out as a brave, competent leader. What follows is a description of what she has accomplished over the last year, with nothing for everyone, because she decided it mattered.
From Calabar to Bauchi, starting over
Happiness Jonas Sarki graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Abuja in 2020. After her studies, she settled in Calabar, worked as a teacher in a private school, and raised her two children. She was capable, educated, and looking for something more.
She found it in the National Health Fellowship Program, a competitive national initiative under Nigeria's Sector-Wide Approach to health reform, implemented by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare under Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health. Fellows are selected from across Nigeria through a rigorous process to serve as emerging leaders in health systems strengthening.
Happiness was selected. She was deployed to Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area in Bauchi State, far from Calabar, far from family. Her Letter of Recommendation from Dr. Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, National Coordinator of the SWAp Coordination Office, describes a fellow who demonstrated professionalism, commitment to service, and the capacity to make a real difference in community health outcomes.
When everything became personal
During her fellowship, Happiness participated in an autism screening training program developed by ABA World and the Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She learned to use validated screening tools designed specifically for Nigerian children. She learned how to talk to parents, how to explain results with care, and how to connect families to next steps.
Something changed in her during that training. Autism was no longer an abstract public health topic. It became something she understood and cared about. She does not speak publicly about why. What she speaks about, clearly and consistently, is the families of Bauchi State, and their urgent need for information, support, and services that most communities take for granted.
After her training, Happiness did not wait for April 2. She did not wait for a budget or a desk or someone to tell her what to do. She created Facebook and Instagram accounts for her Bauchi initiative, designed them herself, built a following, and began posting content about autism every day. She made a logo. She created graphics. Every post was thought through carefully, designed with attention, and shared with purpose. Volunteers who saw the pages could not believe that one person was doing all of this. She recorded short videos about autism in English and in Hausa, sitting in front of her phone, speaking directly and simply to families who needed to hear the information in their language. Happiness is the person who shows up.
She is currently translating written materials about autism into Hausa so that local doctors and parents could read them. She replied to every comment and every message from families who were worried, confused, or had never heard the word autism before. Then she picked up the phone and called people. She contacted the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, ATBU Teaching Hospital, and secured it as the confirmed venue for Bauchi's Spark a Spectrum event on April 2. A teaching hospital. Because Happiness understood that autism screening belongs in a medical setting, and she made that happen.
She wrote a formal letter to Zamani TV, Bauchi State, requesting a meeting to introduce the initiative and explore media collaboration. And it worked. Amb. Hafeez Hassan Jibrin, the Managing Director of Zamani TV Bauchi State, not only agreed, he joined the celebrity challenge himself, making the heart sign in support of autism awareness. Zamani TV will cover the Spark a Spectrum event live on April 2. She engaged teachers, health workers, young professionals, community leaders, office workers, school principals, and members of organizations like the Young Leaders Network. She held awareness sessions. She brought groups of people together.
The photos tell the story better than any words can
Scroll through the #BauchiNGSparkASpectrum2026 photo album and you will see children in school uniforms making the heart sign at their desks. Teachers in classrooms. Men and women in offices, in traditional attire, in community spaces. Groups of health workers standing together. A school principal. A deputy director. A television station managing director. Young mothers. Elders. Young people who gathered at an international women's event, all turning toward the camera with their hands signing a heart.
Happiness Jonas Sarki did not just raise awareness. She reached an entire community. She built something real, and she built it alone, in her own time, with no salary and no support.
Here is the detail that stops me every time I think about it. When Happiness began organizing volunteers for the April 2 event, some of them could not believe that she was doing all of this work without payment. They asked her to cover their data costs and transportation. Basic things. Small amounts of money that add up quickly when you have no income. She paid them. Out of her own pocket. Without a job. She did not complain. She did not ask anyone for help. She simply made sure her volunteers could show up, because she understood that the families waiting for screening on April 2 needed those volunteers to be there. That is the kind of person Happiness Jonas Sarki is.
Bauchi State has no dedicated autism center. There is no specialist clinic, no trained autism therapist in the public system, no structured pathway for families who receive a positive screening result and need to know what to do next. What there is, right now, is a community that Happiness has already reached. A teaching hospital that has already said yes. A television station that is already coming. A network of teachers, health workers, and community leaders who already know what autism is and why it matters. The foundation for an autism center in Bauchi has already been built. Happiness built it. What is missing is a building, equipment, and the resources to hire trained staff.
Her dream
Happiness Jonas Sarki wants to open an autism center in Bauchi State. Not a small room with a few pamphlets. A real center, an inclusive school where children of all abilities learn together in the same space, with high-quality therapies, collaboration with the teaching hospital and the university, and services that are actually available to families who need them.
She has the relationships, the trust of the community, the passion, the track record. The only thing she does not have is money. Her contract with the local government ended a month ago. She is currently looking for work. Anyone in public health, education, or the social sector in Nigeria who reads this and does not reach out to her will have missed something important.
A direct note to anyone considering a donation
I rarely write personal appeals. I am writing one now because Happiness Jonas Sarki deserves it, and because the families of Bauchi State need it.
If you are someone with resources, a physician, a foundation, a Nigerian in the diaspora who has thought about giving back, a professional who wants to put money where it will actually work, I want you to know what you would be investing in. You would be investing in a woman who moved to a city alone, learned a new field, built a social media presence from scratch, designed a logo, made videos in two languages, translated medical documents, secured a teaching hospital, convinced a television station, mobilised a community, and paid her own volunteers out of her own empty pocket. You would be investing in a community that is already awake, already aware, already asking questions, already ready for services that do not yet exist. Happiness does not ask for much. She never has. That is part of why she has done so much with so little. But she should not have to keep doing this alone.
To support Happiness Jonas Sarki's work and her vision for an autism center in Bauchi State, please contact loukia@abaworld.org.
The title reflects what she has always been doing: reaching the families that no one else reached, and turning awareness into action.
On April 2, the cameras from Zamani TV will be at ATBU Teaching Hospital in Bauchi. The families will arrive. The volunteers will be there. And Happiness Jonas Sarki will be doing what she always does, quietly making sure everything works, for everyone, with everything she has.
She inspires me to do more. I hope she inspires you too.
Watch Happiness's autism awareness videos in English and Hausa
youtube.com/shorts/YtJeV2-h3Lc
youtube.com/shorts/_qYn049Ms38
youtube.com/shorts/Nx4Wt3fO1y8
Contact ABA World: loukia@abaworld.org · loukia@abaworld.org · abaworld.org/spark-a-spectrum
#SparkASpectrum2026 · #TogetherWeDoMore · #BauchiNGSparkASpectrum2026 · #AutismNigeria