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About the Project
Meeting the Development and Participation
Rights of Adolescent Girls is a multi-country
initiative funded by the United Nations Foundation
(UNF). The implementing partners UNFPA, UNICEF
and WHO aim through this project to better address
the development needs of adolescents, with an emphasis
on adolescent girls. Eleven countries are involved
in this comprehensive, integrated approach: Bangladesh,
Benin, Burkina Faso, Jordan, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania,
Mongolia, Palestine, Russia
and Senegal. In most countries all three
coordinating UN agencies are involved in joint
programming for adolescents.
Most countries now recognize that investing in
and empowering women and girls is one of the most cost effective
and efficient ways to advance the development agenda. Though the
specific activities in each country vary, all 11 initiatives work
towards some common goals to ensure that adolescent girls have
the same rights and opportunities as boys.
Each agency implements interventions in accordance
with the principles and policies of its mandate.
Implementing
Partners
UNICEF
The primary objective of the global component of
the project is to provide technical support to the 10 implementing
countries, foster partnership and share experience and document
practices to further the rights of adolescents globally, regionally
and at country level. In the countries, UNICEF is supporting the
implementation of the project by their partners -Government, NGOs,
UN agencies and adolescents. At global level the lessons learned
from the project are being used to broaden programming choices
for and with adolescents.
Adolescent
Girls http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/index_girls.html
WHO
The role of WHO in the global component is to
encourage greater attention to monitoring and evaluation through
the introduction of new methodologies and support to examine
specific issues in selected countries. For example, special attention
was given to the measurement of adolescent participation in 2 countries,
measuring the improvement of health service delivery in others.
WHO has developed and tested a methodology to assist in design
and monitoring of programmes call MAPM (Mapping Adolescent Programming
and Measurement) framework which was tested and used during three
workshops, which were attended by Bangladesh, Benin, Jordan,
Mauritania, Mongolia, Palestine, Russia and Senegal.
Adolescent
Health and Development http://www.who.int/child-adolescent-health/OVERVIEW/AHD/adh_over.htm
Population Council
Over the past few years, the Population Council has
dedicated considerable effort at devising strategies
in order to assist program planners working in the
field of international adolescent development to understand
better the lives of the young people they want their
programs to reach. An essential part of this effort
has been the publication and dissemination of "Facts
About Adolescents from the Demographic and Health Survey:
Statistical Tables for Program Planning." With
UNFPA support under the Adolescent Girls initiative,
this project has continued to expand.
The tables are designed to facilitate fact-based planning,
with an eye to illustrating the heterogeneity of individual
countries' adolescent population. The results are printed
in individual country-level reports consisting of user-friendly
data tables with commentary highlighting some of the
more striking information. Over the past year, with
UNFPA's support, translated versions of the tables (in
French) have become available for Francophone West African
countries.
The data tables have been disseminated in international
fora, and several technical support workshops have been
conducted with the support of the current grant.
Facts
About Adolescents From the Demographic and Health Survey:
Statistical Tables for Program Planning http://www.popcouncil.org/gfd/gfddhs.html
With support from UNFPA's Adolescent
Girls Initiative, the Population Council has developed
guidance briefs for creating safe and supportive spaces
for adolescents.
Adolescent girls and boys need safe and supportive environments
where they are treated with respect and dignity, and
where their reputations are protected. In most countries
there are designated places where citizens can go for
recreation, education, entertainment, and participation
in political life. While the local town hall, park or
sports facility may have been intended for general public
use, all too often girls and women feel too intimidated
to use them for fear of physical or psychological retaliation
by boys and men.
The types of settings that can serve as safe spaces
vary from place to place, depending on who is using
them. An appropriate space for a group of newly-wed
adolescent girls would necessarily be quite different
than a recreational space for unmarried boys. Possible
safe and supportive spaces are community centres, schools
(out of season or after school), parks, sports field,
faith-based centres or homes of trusted community members.
Learning about how adolescent boys and girls spend their
time, where they go, what they do, what access they
have to positive role models and mentors, is critical
for the development of responsive and creative programming
for young people, particularly the most underserved.
Transitions
to Adulthood -- Creating Safe Spaces http://www.popcouncil.org/ppdb/t2asafe.html
Family Care International (FCI)
Family Care International (FCI), a
technical partner in this initiative, has developed an effective
intervention strategy for improving the reproductive health and
socio-economic situations of rural adolescent girls in Francophone
Africa.
FCI began working in 2002 in Burkina Faso, Mali
and Senegal to help UNFPA and local partners develop a strategy
to meet the reproductive and sexual health needs of rural girls.
FCI conducted workshops and used other innovative research techniques
with girls, parents and community leaders to solicit their perspectives,
share information, and define priorities for the future. The research
examined access to education and literacy programs, access to
reproductive health information and services, income-earning opportunities,
decision-making power, physical and psychological violence, and
potential areas for community and policy-level mobilization.
One of the most striking results of the research was how dramatically
these girls' lives narrow around their mid-teens. As rural girls
mature through adolescence, their opportunities for educational
and economic advancement diminish considerably. While younger
girls were open and curious, expressed a fierce desire to stay
in school, and were determined to gain economic independence as
they got older, in contrast, the older girls, age 16 and up, had
almost all left school, felt their lives were extremely circumscribed,
and were focused primarily on marriage and child-bearing as almost
their only option in life. The intervention strategy FCI has developed
seeks to provide rural girls with more life choices with respect
to marriage, childbearing, education and economic independence.
Using a holistic, multi-sectoral approach to the socio-economic
and reproductive health challenges facing rural girls, FCI will
work in partnership with local NGOs and government ministries
towards achieving this goal.
Family
Care International Web site: http://www.familycareintl.org/
Building
and Sustaining a Better Life for Rural Adolescent Girls
in Francophone Africa : An Intervention Strategy
-- PowerPoint Presentation
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