Integrated project to strengthen the reproductive health of women youth and adolescents in Senegal

This project aims to reduce preventable maternal deaths and unmet reproductive health needs by improving the availability acceptability and accessibility of youth-friendly quality health and reproductive services. It also seeks to empower women youth and adolescents in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) decision-making. The project targets 838 000 people including vulnerable groups such as uneducated girls and people with disabilities. It focuses on regions with the lowest rates of contraceptive use in remote areas including Kédougou Kolda Tambacounda Sédhiou Ziguinchor and the health districts of Popenguine and the south of Dakar. Project activities include: (1) providing comprehensive sexual education to youth and girls in schools and youth clubs; (2) supporting positive masculinity by scaling up the ‘husband schools’ strategy. This includes advocating for SRHR among 14 400 religious leaders and 2 300 cultural actors using a gender transformative approach. The approach seeks to actively examine challenge and transform the underlying causes of gender inequality rooted in inequitable social structures and institutions; (3) supplying mobile medical equipment to healthcare facilities to improve care accessibility; (4) conducting a study to obtain data on the behaviours of adolescents youth and women on reproductive health and family planning. This is to provide better services tailored to adolescents needs; (5) training healthcare staff in adapted and quality family planning services; and (6) developing and implementing an integrated communication strategy on reproductive health of the mother and child gender-based violence gender equality and human rights. The project draws from best practices and lessons learned from the " Improving the health and well-being of women and adolescents in Southern Senegal" project implemented with strong results by the United Nations Population Fund. This project supports Canada's commitment to global

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) increased access to high-quality and youth-friendly integrated sexual and reproductive health services; and (2) improved practices conducive to changing social norms in family planning reproductive health and gender equality for adolescent girls youth and women.