Achieving Reproductive Rights for Adolescents Reducing Maternal and Newborn Mortality

The goal of this project is to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of adolescent girls and women and to reduce maternal and newborn mortality among vulnerable populations in Bolivia. This is to be achieved through a rights-based approach that is adolescent-friendly and culturally-sensitive. The project addresses barriers to adolescents’ demand for reproductive and sexual health services challenges in the provision of such services and community and institutional level governance and accountability. Plan Canada works with CIES (Bolivian NGO) to implement the project in 12 municipalities in the departments of La Paz Cochabamba Chuquisaca and Potosí. COVID response: As a result of the pandemic-related restrictions the project adapted many of its activities to remote implementation allowing work to continue without altering the expected project results and also responding to the new challenges the pandemic places on the exercise of SRHR and gender equality. Most of these activities seek to protect and maximize project outcomes by taking into account additional challenges faced by health and protection authorities in offering services to youth and adolescents in the context of the pandemic.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) enhanced ability of adolescents women of reproductive age and pregnant women to exercise their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and use gender-transformative culturally-sensitive and adolescent-friendly sexual and reproductive health services; (2) improved delivery of high quality gender-transformative adolescent-friendly and culturally-sensitive sexual and reproductive health services to women and adolescent girls and boys; and (3) improved quality of participatory local health governance systems for delivery of evidence-based culturally-sensitive adolescent-friendly and gender-transformative SRHR services.