Approximately 12 million adolescent girls aged 15-19 years and 2.5 million girls aged less than 16 years give birth while nearly 4 million girls undergo unsafe abortions each year in low and lower-middle income countries (LLMIC).
A standard approach is currently used in the content and delivery of care for both adolescents and older mothers (20-34) during pregnancy, delivery, and in the postpartum period. There is a widespread assumption that adolescents are being reached appropriately by interventions that focus on all women using a continuum of care approach. However, existing evidence demonstrates a lower coverage and poorer quality and outcomes of maternal and newborn health (MNH) services for adolescents compared to older mothers.
Save the Children in partnership with youth-led organizations, WETEC and UYAFPAH, invite you to a 3-part webinar series targeting policy makers, implementing organizations, adolescents, donor agencies, ministries of health and advocates. In this series, you will:
- Understand the gaps in MNH coverage, quality, and outcomes for adolescents and their newborns during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period.
- Explore adaptations required to ensure existing MNH systems and services address these gaps.
- Understand the gaps and opportunities in existing MNH global commitments and their monitoring and accountability systems in demonstrating the unique needs of adolescents and their newborns.
Series Sessions:
- Why should MNH services be more responsive to the needs of adolescents and their newborns during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period?
- Date: 19 October 2021 from 13:00-14:30 GMT
- Click to register
- Click to watch recording (passcode: bWQ3@8gz)
- Click to access the slides
- How should we adapt existing MNH services to be more responsive to the needs of adolescents and their newborns?
- Date: 2 November 2021 at from 13:00-14:30 GMT
- Click to register
- Click to watch recording (passcode sD.@W8u4)
- Click to access the slides
- To what extent are adolescents visible in global commitments for MNH and their monitoring and accountability?
- Date: 16 November 2021 at from 13:00-14:30 GMT
- Click to Register
- Click to watch recording (passcode GtBi5QV$)
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ABOUT UYAFPAH
UYAFPAH is a voluntary, not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that prioritizes the wellbeing of young people through the observation and advocacy for Family Planning and Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health Rights, with community-based structures of Volunteers, Health Workers, Opinion Leaders and the entire youth fraternity. With a vision to see a Ugandan society in which every young person has access to SRHR information they need and in which their SRHR choices are respected. The mission of UYAFPAH is to promote high quality, high impact and gender sensitive sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights information for vulnerable and most at risk populations of young people (14-35 years) in Uganda through capacity building, issue-specific advocacy and strategic partnerships.
UYAFPAH’s work with adolescents who are pregnant and/or parenting: UYAFPAH has a partnership with Remnant Generations – a teenage mothers’ home in Kampala where we take stranded and neglected pregnant adolescent girls for rehabilitation and training in life skills. From this home, pregnant adolescent girls get basic life skills such tailoring, hairdressing – skills that see them become entrepreneurs of their own. They are also encouraged to go back to school after delivering their babies.
ABOUT WETEC KENYA
WETEC creates an environment where adolescent girls and women amplify their voices to demand justice and equality and discover their potential. WETEC was founded on the need and desire to bridge the gap of adolescent girls’ isolation in development. Vulnerable girls from rural communities we target are often left out or not able to access life changing opportunities that can improve their lives, increase their access to SRHR information and services, quality education while enabling them to fully exercise their rights. Western Twaweza Empowerment Campaign (WETEC, Kenya) mission is to improve the quality of life and provide lifetime opportunities for vulnerable girls and teenage mothers and young women, through advocacy, skills building and holistic education in Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights while advancing reproductive justice.
Most of WETEC Kenya’s programs are shaped from the ground up, by creating spaces where we listen to girls’ experiences, develop with girls, implement with girls geared towards the need to find solutions together among adolescent girls/young with policymakers’ stakeholders.
The organization’s Thematic areas include Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Comprehensive Support for adolescent mothers including MNH follow up plans, economic empowerment and ending all forms violence against AGYW. WETECs objective is community mobilization and capacity building of adolescent girls to be empowered enough to thrive, skills building and informal education, creating linkages and referral for survivors of violence in rural communities.