SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

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The stigma attached to sex and sexuality ensures that such issues never enter public discourse, lack of comprehensive sexuality education, inaccessibility, and lack of knowledge around contraceptives, erroneous sex education culminating in unhealthy sexual practices and reproductive ill-health are large issues that plague the youth. This is turn leads to early marriages, early pregnancy, and severe health issues among girls from vulnerable groups.  

Our Sexual Reproductive Health program aims to empower girls to become drivers of change to make informed decisions about the & also support their peers to make decisions about sexuality, life goals, reproductive health, and enjoy their Sexual Reproductive Health Rights.

To achieve this, Plan India provides the required knowledge and skills to help adolescent girls make informed decisions and actively engage them in designing and monitoring SRH programs.

Capacity building of families and communities on Sexual Reproductive Health helps them to support their children and ability to monitor the quality of SRH services. Secondly, building capacities of families and communities for the better understanding of the needs of girls and support them to realize their rights, and also monitor the quality of SRH services.

Key Actions:

Polygon 3 Deliver Comprehensive Sex Education to Children and Youth

Polygon 3 Awareness generation on misconceptions about HIV infection and transmission with prevention using informed choices

Polygon 3 Capacity building of parents and caregivers on core SRHR issues and communicating with their children about SRH

Polygon 3 Work with communications experts, public figures, youth, and journalists, to campaign on positive use of social media to raise public awareness on SRH

Polygon 3 Capacity building of community health volunteers, peer educators, teachers on SRHR

Polygon 3 Influence and support state and district authorities to establish menstrual hygiene management in the development and emergency context.

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STORIES OF CHANGE

Community Impact

SAMBHAV

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Jharkhand, with a population of 0.73 crores aged between 10 and 19 years, has the third-highest rate of child marriages in the country.  38% of girls get married before the legal age of 18 years. In 2015, Plan India started ‘Sambhav’, an adolescent empowerment program with support from UNICEF to reduce child marriage and teenage pregnancy in six blocks of East Singhbhum district by 2019.  

With the active participation of adolescent girls and boys in 942 villages, the impact of gender-transformative is unprecedented.  With the equal participation of adolescent girls and boys as their allies in 942 villages, the outcome of a gender-transformative environment is exceptional.  Sambhav worked with 47,000 adolescents between 14–18 years by establishing a girls’ and boys’ adolescent group in each village. 

A youth who showed keen interest and leadership skills in each group was then groomed as a peer educator (PE) and trained in 10 life-skills modules such as decision making, problem-solving, financial literacy, sexual reproductive health, and child rights.

The PEs cascaded this training to their youth groups.  Parents were oriented and mobilized on child rights issues and Sexual Reproductive Health issues. Intergenerational dialogues were established to spark conversations at panchayat and block-level meetings that were pivotal in giving children the opportunity and support needed to voice their concerns. Sambhav team members motivated Anganwadi workers to incorporate sexual reproductive health and nutritional issues on the adolescent girls in their work schedule.  

Sambhav and its youth champions prevented 40 child marriages in 6 months. The collective efforts of stakeholders have led to self-sustained youth empowerment supported by the larger community. Sambhav merged with Tejaswini, a program run by the Government of Jharkhand and the World Bank for the socio-economic empowerment of adolescent girls and young women. Tejaswini will be based on Sambhav’s learnings and will provide sustainability and continuity for the young community leaders shaped by Sambhav.

Highlights

Polygon 3 22,643 adolescents (14,420 girls) reached through 1,614 adolescent groups and 1,878 peer educators trained on sexual reproductive health and other health related issues 

Polygon 3 3,562 FLWs, teachers and village-level CPC members trained to support vulnerable children and adolescents

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