SRHR EDUCATION FOR YOUTH

When young people are illiterate, they fall prey to so many harmful practices. SRHR intervenes to help them making choices.

Hope Lydia Ndagire

RWO Executive director

FOR

Young girls and boys

In and out of school, young people

Teenage mothers

what is "srhr"?

Sexual and Reproductive
Health Rights

“To maintain sexual and reproductive health, people need access to accurate information and the safe, effective, affordable, and acceptable contraception method of their choice.” 

They must be informed and empowered to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.

And when they decide to have children, women must have access to services that can help them have a fit pregnancy, safe delivery, and healthy baby. – (UNFPA Fund)

WHY

Lack of SRHR knowledge in communities contributes to violence against women, teenage pregnancies, and child marriages. A project aims to empower the younger generation by bridging the gap in SRHR information.

Our mission is to rewrite the narratives of teenage girls and young women.

how it works

RWO provides accurate sexual health information to empower youth decision-making.

We do it through:

Through a peer to peer education model, young people, both boys and girls receive weekly SRHR information and educate sessions on topics such as:

  • Human development
  • Gender
  • Life skills
  • Safety from violence,
  • Relationships,
  • Promoting and protecting health,
  • Alcohol and drug abuse,
  • Making reusable sanitary pads 
 

We deliver these SRHR educate sessions through our safe spaces Clubs model of both In-School and Community Resilient Clubs.

For In-School Resilient Clubs; we have partnered with Hebron Jnr School Nalugala, Kitala Secondary School, Kitala C/U Primary School, and St.Paul Bulega Primary School. We target schools where pupils are vulnerable and at risk of dropping out so that we work through the Resilient Clubs to improve retention of especially girls who usually don’t advance to Secondary School. Putting them more at risk of child marriages and teenage pregnancies.

With our Community Resilient Clubs, we partner with influential community members who open up their home compounds to us as safe spaces for vulnerable women and girls to come together & access comprehensive SRHR information and service referrals

The main objective for these Safe spaces is creating a supportive environment for adolescents SRHR and also providing spaces where they can learn, educate and stay safe.

Resilient Women’s Organisation has so far put in place 2 safe space centres, Nalugala and in Kitala.  We create of safe spaces within the communities in partnerships with the community local leaders, more especially the women and youth local leaders. 

These have provided spaces where young people learn, educate and help them stay safe during this unprecedented times of COVID-19 where schools are closed

6 Model family’s/mentor parents were selected; these provide us with free safe space venues where young people meet from.

While early unions remain prevalent in the communities where we work, model families and parents who are seen to have succeeded in life, educated their children, play a significant role in offering an alternative to the social norms and practices that fuel child marriages and have a strong voice in the communities.

As an organisation, we believe in the ability of edutainment when it comes to young people.  

A peer Music-Dance-Drama (MDD) trainer was recruited to help in developing talents among young girls, young women and boys. 

The MDD Club organised and led the community change ambassadors’ day where all the clubs came together to raise awareness on ending child marriages and early unions through poems, music, traditional and creative dance, education and news reporting, drama and skits.

100 young people participated in the presence of the mentor parents and leaders. We have learnt that advocacy through MDD increases confidence and the ability to raise sensitive SRHR issues affecting young people including access to and use of contraception, parents-adolescent communication and harmful cultural practices including child marriages.  

We organize menstrual and health talk to sensitize young people and parents on menstrual care management.

In the last talk we trained 30 young people and 4 mentor parents to making reusable sanitary pads. Among them 8 were trained as trainers.

These has also transferred the skill to train their fellow peers and parents.

The talk was also aimed at highlighting myths and miscomputations surrounding menstrual periods and pregnancy.

Family Planning means the control over when to have children

A lot of women face abuses from their spouses because they want to have less children or non at all, and the spouses don’t want to hear it.

Then we have many people with no incomes at all, having so many kids they can’t even take care of.

It’s important to have planned families if we are to fight poverty. That’s why we offer SRHR as family planning  to vulnerable families, facing GBV.

As we talk about equal access for all, our Resilient resource center is a community library where women and adolescents access free reading materials and internet services. Knowledge is power after all.

Mental Health Awareness, Zumba classes for physical fitness & Candid girl talk to counter harmful social norms that keep Gender Based Violence alive make up our Fridays at our safe spaces.

what SRHR FIGHTS AGAINST

EMPOWERing NEXT GENERATION

Education is not a rescue:
It may seem so. It sounds less important, less urgent.

It’s exactly the opposite. To create long-lasting solutions, we need to inform and educate young people, so they will be able to be a better generation and to do better choices. 

It’s a long, tough work. We need to be more, to travel around the country, reach more people and create a bigger impact.

If you want to, you can be our boost. 
Even a little donation can allow us to visit one village more, and change hundreds of lives.