ACT WOMEN: Empowering Women and Adolescent Girls in Tchologo Communities

This project aims to empower women and adolescent girls and improve their sexual and reproductive health as well as maternal and infant health in the Tchologo region of Côte d’Ivoire. Project’s activities include: (1) conducting analyses on gender roles within the community and identifying socio-cultural barriers to access to services and risk factors; (2) raising awareness among communities mothers husbands and adolescents to improve behaviours related to sexual and reproductive health maternal and infant health nutrition and outbreak prevention; (3) supporting members of women’s and adolescent girls’ associations in establishing healthy and sustainable association management mechanisms; (4) training and raising awareness among community leaders and officials on inclusive governance so that women and adolescent girls can participate in local decision making; and (5) training women’s and adolescent girls’ associations on the use of referral services and mechanisms for survivors of gender based violence. This project is intended to directly benefit more than 192 000 people (more than 62% of whom are women and adolescent girls) and indirectly the entire population of the 15 targeted health zones in the Tchologo region or more than 328 000 people.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) women and girls have more influence over the availability and quality of services related to sexual and reproductive health maternal and infant health nutrition psychosocial support prevention and outbreak response; (2) women girls and their representative organizations are more involved in social accountability and decision making mechanisms; and (3) women and girls are more empowered to exercise their rights in relation to equality sexual and reproductive health and the elimination of gender based violence.