adminLatwell Nyangu
OVER 200 young people have been targeted across IN the region to enhance meaningful youth participation in Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) and Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) policies.
The development is courtesy of Girls Education and Advocacy in the Region (GEAR) Alliance, which launched its Sexuality Education for Transformation (SET) Project in Zimbabwe last week.
The project is being funded by Amplify Change.
Women Excel Director, Rodney Mutombo who is an implementing partner with GEAR, said:
“60 will be trained in Zimbabwe as SRH champions but across five countries there will be 200 SRH champions to be trained.
“At the end of this SET project implementation, GEAR Alliance is expecting to be having a movement of 72 youth-serving organisations in the five countries where the project is being implemented in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
“We are also looking forward to enhancing meaningful youth participation and influencing SRH policies in general and CSE policies in particular.
“To this end, there shall be policy alignment and review on traditionally neglected SRH focus areas such as abortion, menstrual health management.”
He added:
“The SET project seeks to ensure that adolescent girls and young women have access to SRH services and information.
“The GEAR Alliance jointly pursues the targets of SDG 4 and SDG 5 using the argument that one way of ending gender inequalities and inequities is to ensure that girls and young women have access to education.
“The alliance is alive to the reality that girls in rural and farming communities are excluded from accessing education due to the absence of CSE, menstrual health inadequacies, sexual violence and child marriages amongst other SRH infirmities.
“To this end, girls` enjoyment of SRH rights is a critical enabler of their dignity and well being,” said Mutombo.
He said the goal was designed to use access to CSE as a means to empower girls.
“There is need to empower adolescent girls and young women from rural communities to prevent downstream SRH challenges such as unplanned pregnancies, unsafe abortions, sexual violence and discrimination amongst other challenges.
“Under this SET project, we will run different youth focused activities which will be training 60 youths in rural areas of Zimbabwe to be SRHR champions, we will also host national youth conferences on SRH and SRH research indabas/ symposiums.
“In addition we will host the Southern Africa Regional Students Youth Conference on SRH where we will host more than 100 young people from the five countries.”
The project inception was attended by different strategic partners from women’s rights sector, Health Sector, Key Population sector, youth sector and National Aids Council, among others.
GEAR Alliance is a regional alliance with the goal to ensure inclusive and equitable access to quality education by adolescent girls and young women in rural and farming communities in Southern Africa.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter