Support Young People to Lead Social Change

Meenakshi is 20 years old and is currently pursuing her Bachelors in Arts from Delhi. She is one of the youth advocates who participated in the capacity of a youth auditor in one of our programmes – The Access Project (TAP) – which assesses youth friendliness of health services in government hospitals and private clinics in Delhi and Varanasi. TAP uses a mystery client approach to assess the youth friendliness and capacitates young people to audit hospitals and counsellors and seek services related to their sexual and reproductive health (SRH).

Her journey began in May 2018 and concluded in February 2019 with TAP and she feels it has brought numerous changes in her life. She now feels more confident to talk about young people's needs, their health, rights, and has helped her destigmatise myths about periods, abortion, sex and gender. The trainings she had attended as part of the programme also helped her enhance her audit skills and to learn in-depth about issues surrounding young people’s SRHR.

She faced several challenges during the audits as she initially found it intimidating to speak to doctors or counselors as she was doing it for the very first time. She felt nervous, confused and afraid of being identified whilst trying to access sexual health services. The environment was also not conducive for young people to access information or services due to the long waiting time at the registration desk to speak to doctors and/or counsellors. In addition this, there was a general lack of information within the hospital departments of where to find information on specific sexual health services.

Public advocacy was the final component of the programme wherein she advocated for services such as contraception and abortion with local level government and health officials. The on ground public advocacy gave Meenakshi the confidence as she found the experience to be very insightful and empowering. At the beginning of the programme, she found it difficult to interact with others and talk about sexual and reproductive rights. However, with time she found that she became more interactive, talkative, confident and found it easy to talk to other people about SRHR. With her engagement as a youth auditor, Meenakshi became self-assured and would like to continue to work on these similar issues in the future.

Your support has been instrumental in building leadership among youth advocates like Meenakshi in order to advocate for their health and rights. Thank you very much for the support and for your continued interest in our work!