Young women from Burkina Faso, Jordan, Mozambique share stories of reproductive rights and choice
Last week, in honor of the World Contraception Day 2024 theme “empowering choices,” Pathfinder brought together youth leaders and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) experts from Burkina Faso, Jordan, and Mozambique for a webinar: “Supporting the Next Generation of Young Leaders: Multi-Country Approaches to Youth Programming.”
Visit Pathfinder’s YouTube channel to watch the recording in Arabic, English, French, or Portuguese.
During the webinar, representatives from three Pathfinder programs—PREPARE-BURKINA, Act With Her, and Impacto—described how their work expanded access to comprehensive, quality SRH information and services, while engaging women, girls, and their allies to increase bodily autonomy, curb gender-based violence, and further gender equity.
Zahra Sohail of Pathfinder’s Building Healthy Families program in Pakistan moderated the webinar.
PREPARE-BURKINA
Augusta Bintou Traoré of PREPARE-BURKINA explained how the program enhanced services for youth in 10 districts facing an ongoing security crisis. He said youth were the most affected when it came to disruptions in SRH services caused by the crisis. To increase access to information and services, the project disseminated SRH messages through radio and developed clubs for adolescent girls and boys where they discuss issues affecting their lives and develop action plans to further their own growth. The project used a positive masculinity approach, engaging men and boys to support the agency, health, and well-being of women and girls.
Rihana Traoré, a youth champion in Burkina Faso, described how she became pregnant when she was a teenager and was forced to drop out of school. Without access to contraception, she had a second ectopic pregnancy that endangered her life. After having an abortion, and through her connections with PREPARE-BURKINA she received an implant.
“It was a very radical decision for me,” she said of her choice to use the implant. But “I now have a degree in communication and my son is doing really well.”
Act with Her
Dr. Wejdan Abu Lail of Act With Her in Jordan said the project has focused on several areas contributing to adolescents’ healthy and happy transitions to adulthood—such as access to jobs, basic life skills, safety and security, and health. Through the program, Jordanian and refugee adolescents joined empowerment clubs, where young adult mentors hosted group discussions to provide them with information about health and well-being, as well as peer networks. The program contributed to positive shifts in social and gender norms by engaging parents and caregivers in similarly transformative group discussions and developed referral systems for girls facing high risk of gender-based violence and mental health issues. The program reached more than 4,500 very young adolescents, 3,000 parents, and trained more than 150 mentors. Doha Shalhoub, a 15-year-old refugee from Syria living in Jordan, and an Act With Her youth champion, shared her story.
Impacto
Orlanda Ossufo and Albertina Assane of Impacto said the program reached an estimated 2 million people in Mozambique’s Manica and Tete provinces using a multisectoral approach to improve the lives of young women and girls. The program focused on their right to bodily autonomy, providing young women and girls with information that has allowed them to make healthy decisions about their reproductive health; decreased the prevalence of gender-based violence and early marriage; and limited sociocultural norms and beliefs that limit women’s and girls’ decision-making. Impacto did this through engagement of men, boys, community councils, local organizations, schools, and health providers. A cadre of community activists visited households to offer contraceptive counseling, methods, and referrals, and invited girls to join discussion groups for support, knowledge-sharing, and mobilization for rights and autonomy.
Anilina Maze, a youth champion from Manica province, said before being reached by Impacto she believed that contraception caused sterility, a prevalent myth in her community. A community activist debunked that myth and talked to her about the dangers of early marriage and teenage pregnancy.
“When I heard the conversations by the activists, I learned about contraception and how to protect myself from unwanted pregnancies and STIs [sexually transmitted infections], and today, I make my own decisions. I know how many children I want to have and when. I don’t have interference from other people.”
Watch the full webinar in Arabic, English, French, or Portuguese.
