Sexual and Reproductive Health for Women and Adolescents in Northern Nigeria

The project aims to empower women and adolescent girls in targeted northern communities of Nigeria to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health. Project activities include: (1) training and mentoring small drug stores and pharmacies to provide youth-friendly gender-sensitive family planning services including counselling provision of a minimum of five contraceptive products including birth control injectable shots and health care referrals; (2) recruiting training and mentoring a rural women family planning sales force for family planning products; (3) training and mentoring health care workers on the provision of sexual and reproductive health counselling and services including long-acting reversible contraceptives and postpartum services; (4) developing gender-sensitive demand-generation strategies for increasing awareness and adoption of family planning services among women and adolescent girls and boys in both rural and urban settings and in and out-of- school settings; (5) developing and implementing a community engagement strategy targeting religious traditional community opinion leaders and men to support women’s reproductive health rights and empowerment; and (6) strengthening the family planning supply chain and implementing an advocacy strategy to increase funding commitments by states towards reliable sexual and reproductive health commodity procurement and distribution. The project is expected to reach an estimated 2.6 million women of reproductive age of which approximately one million are between 10 and 24 years of age.

The expected outcome for this project include: (1) increased proportion of private sector outlets offering a broader contraceptive method mix and youth-friendly gender-sensitive services in targeted northern states; (2) increased provision of gender-responsive and adolescent-friendly sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services in government health facilities of targeted rural communities; and (3) improved environment at state and community levels that encourages and supports gender-responsive sexual and reproductive health and rights services for women and adolescent girls.