With an increased funding from United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), ARHR is scaling up its project, ‘Empowering Adolescent Girls through Improved Access to Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Quality Gender-responsive Sexual Reproductive Health services’, to the Volta and Ashanti Regions.
The project which seeks to empower adolescent girls through improved access to comprehensive sexuality education and responsive reproductive health services was started in the Central, Greater Accra and Western Regions.
ARHR is working with its partners in the Volta and Ashanti Regions, thus, Volta Educational Renaissance Foundation (VeReF) and Rights and Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana (RRIG) respectively to implement the project in these regions, specifically the South Dayi and Bosomefreho Districts.
A community entry and sensitization was done in these two (2) regions where some traditional authorities, District Assembly representatives, Health Officers, Opinion Leaders and the media were engaged in a discussion on their efforts to help make the implementation of the project a success.
These stakeholders welcomed the project because they believed that equipping young people especially adolescent girls with comprehensive sexuality education was paramount. They indicated that the selected districts for the project was significant because most of the communities in those districts recorded high levels of teenage pregnancy and unsafe abortions.
The project continues to target out-of-school females between 10-19 years of age including persons with disabilities.
Activities to be carried out include sexuality education for these out-of-school female adolescents, documentation and production of IE&C materials on sexuality education for use by these adolescents, strengthening the capacity of selected local NGOs and community facilitators who are facilitating the implementation of the project in the communities and the organization of a sports day for persons with disabilities.
The expectation of the project is that more adolescent girls will be enabled to freely access adolescent friendly health services and also exercise their agency on sexual and reproductive health and its related issues.