Nigeria
Health
Improving emergency response with a network of trained community-based first responders in Nigeria
A comprehensive sexuality education program in Madagascar to reduce early pregnancies
- Progress stage
- Jan 2023 to Jan 2024
Comprehensive sexuality education allows adolescents to receive information, attitudes, and competencies to make healthy and informed decisions through adolescence. Malagasy adolescents’ limited access to this education is a contributing factor to numerous early pregnancies in the country. To change this reality, the organization Projet Jeune Leader (PJL) has developed a holistic comprehensive sexuality education program led by their specialized educators for public middle schools. Funding from FID will allow testing of an adaptation of this program – led for the first time by teacher-candidates – to promote progressive institutionalization of comprehensive sexuality education in rural areas of the country.
Project deployed by:
Context
According to the Madagascar Ministry of health, 32% of girls become pregnant before adulthood. These early and often unwanted pregnancies contribute to young women’s exclusion from education and work and keep them in poverty.
This points shows how difficult it is for young Malagasies to access sexual and reproductive health information and services.
Innovation
The project designed by PJL is based on the principle that in-school comprehensive sexuality education effectively contributes to the adoption of healthy attitudes and behaviors and therefore to the prevention of early pregnancies. The organization has developed a comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) program that is multi-component, led by a highly trained, specialized, dedicated and supported educator to promote behavior change and norms change among young adolescents in the school setting (public middle schools) over the duration of a school year. In partnership with the national Ministry of education, these specialized educators are integrated as members of the public-school personnel throughout the school year.
FID is supporting PJL, working in close partnership with the national Ministry of Education of Madagascar, to pilot the implementation of their CSE program by teacher-candidates in public rural middle schools.
Expected results
The viability of this new CSE implementation model through the processes and systems of the public education sector in Madagascar is demonstrated.
- Adoption and appropriation of the comprehensive sexuality education program by future teachers
- Acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, and social cognitive behavioral determinants by young adolescents who have received the program in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and life skills
- Sustainable access to services and health resources
Projects
Projects funded by FID
