UNFPA builds capacity of community facilitators on adolescent girls

A capacity building workshop has been held for about 60 community facilitators and healthcare providers under the Adolescent Girls Programme being implemented by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Kumasi.

The participants were drawn from Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) working under the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) which is partnering the UNFPA to implement the programme in six districts.

Funded by Global Affairs Canada, the programme which seeks to empower adolescent girls through improved access to reproductive health education and rights based quality sexual and reproductive health in Ghana is being implemented jointly by the UNFPA and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

A total of 56 districts in 11 regions are benefitting from the programme with UNFPA working with partners in 40 districts in nine regions, targeting out-of-school adolescent girls and selected boys.

The UNICEF on the other hand is focusing on adolescent girls in schools in 16 districts in two regions.

Dr. Claudia Donkor, Programme Analyst for Reproductive Health and Humanitarian Assistance of UNFPA, said the programme would, among other things, support the Government to deliver effective multi-sectoral responses to address the interrelated needs of adolescent girls and boys.

She said the programme would also empower the most vulnerable adolescent girls through the provision of, and access to gender-responsive reproductive health education and youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services, including; family planning and contraception.

“The whole idea is that once you have adolescent who are empowered and have knowledge about reproductive health education they would be able to make informed choices and decisions and reach their full potentials,” she noted.

She also spoke of creating enabling environment for adolescent girls to express themselves in a responsive way to become better adults in future, stressing the need to achieve demographic dividends which largely depended on the younger generation.

Nii Ankonu Annorbah Sarpei, the Executive Director of ARHR, said the workshop sought to review the progress of work for 2020 in terms of what had been achieved, the challenges and successes in the implementation of the programme.

He said participants also explored the possibility of engaging adolescent girls and boys through digital platforms which is now in vogue, especially among the youth.