Go Girl against teen pregnancy due to covid 19

Dear Go Girl supporter,

we are proud to share an update of our multi country project with you!

Kenya

Constellation coach Onesmus Mutuku has provided two training sessions on SALT-CLCP to a growing team of facilitators. The team is diverse as it has members from the refugee community and the neighborhood, girls, young mothers and boys joining as facilitators. Together they are bringing weekly home visits to open up the conversation on sensitive issues such as sexuality, abuse and teenage pregnancy. The home visits have an impact on the neighborhood and on the facilitators. The Go Girl Team is now active in 10 slum villages in the sub-county of Dagoreti (Nairobi County): Waithaka, Kirigu, Ndonyo, Kibera, Kabiria, Mutego satellite, Kawangware, Amboseli, Kagemi, Uthir. 

The team grew organically from three to ten facilitators. The first trained facilitators ensure the onboarding of new members who are girls and boys from the neighborhood and from the refugee community.

Cameroon

In March 2021, Doreen, the CEO of the organization participated in an Online SALT training of The Constellation. This helped her to bring SALT as a mindset to her team. 

In May 2021 the team hosted an online SALT Visit for the other partners in the project, who learned how the fabrication of menstruation pads leads to conversations about sexual health. 

In November 2021 The full team of Cho Ngafor, existing of young girls and a young man hosted a virtual stand for 50 participants from all continents who learned about how a safe space for dialogue about sexuality is created, while working on creation of hygiene pads. Several other teams have taken the idea, to adapt in their own context. 

India

The foundation is working with 3 villages in the State of Meghalaya.  The project is about improving the sexual and reproductive health and nutrition of adolescents to bring about behaviour change to reduce the numbers of teenage pregnancies and marriages and to also work with young mothers in creating access to sexual reproductive health services needed by them. The project also addresses the well being of Adolescent girls and the taboos around sexuality. 

An experienced coach of The Constellation based in New Delhi is training the local facilitators from a distance. She has also brought a support visit, when covid-19 lockdown measures were eased. The team intensified SALT visits from that moment onward. Intergenerational conversations between women started opening up. After the series of home visits now facilitators are encouraging community members to work toward their dream for a better future for girls.

Ghana

“Go Girl Ghana has done weekly meetings with the girls to better understand the root issues behind the teen pregnancies and create plans to best make a change with these girls. These groups are divided in school girls and so called community girls in both of our active communities. We have done home visits to all of our girls' families to have a better understanding of the problems surrounding these communities and the girls as part of that.

Additionally, we have created Mother Clubs in both communities to raise awareness and find the girls who have dropped out of school and off the radar after getting pregnant. We are working with those girls to see how we can get them back into school.

We have hosted a virtual Learn and share SALT visit in June 2021, with 24 participants from 12 countries which focussed on the local concerns around teen pregnancy, the common ground we could find with the other countries and how we can learn from each other. 

The team has grown with 4 more facilitator volunteers divided over the 2 communities and will continue to grow in the next period. The lead facilitator is being trained online on SALT-CLCP.

Indonesia

IndoCompetence has introduced SALT and CLCP as ways of working to prevent teenage pregnancy in three communities where the family planning program is implemented.  The team has involved about 30 youths and 20 parents as well as 5 community leaders as they stimulate conversations around concerns and hopes of the community members about the frequent teenage pregnancies.

“In one community we initiated a discussion with a mother group that was concerned about the taboo: Parents of teenage moms were embarrassed and still refusing support. Usually the parents would solve the problems by making them get married. Then, during our dream building session we noticed that mothers were encouraged to help provide information and access to services of those teenage moms from village midwives.  The mother's awareness was considered an achievement of our accompaniment.  Moreover, three out of seven mothers were our story contributors to our book entitled “Memoir of Youth,  the True Stories of Teenage Pregnancy”. This book was written by 18 writers where they share their experiences in relation with teenage pregnancy. We use the book to fundraise for our activities, and as a reference to open difficult conversations”. 

“In another community we organised three workshops where we provided community counseling to mothers on how to open a conversation with their teenager, through ‘SALT talk’. The mothers report about more open conversations now.

Lastly,  in Bandung we conducted three discussions with around 20-30 youths to discuss the impact of teenage pregnancy on their life.  In those conversation some teenagers realised they are more at risk as they tried to smoke, drink, consume additive drug and buying sex from commercial sexworkers. We will invite them to think through actions they can take by themselves to reduce the risks”.

Thank you again for the support you have shown to date and we hope for your continued support in the future.

All the best,

Go Girl