This project supports the establishment of three regional Centres of Excellence (CoEs) for youth centered SRH programming and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) for Latin America, Anglophone and Francophone Africa. With support of the project, three regional CoEs spread expertise and knowledge to other stakeholders and support quality service provision and large-scale implementation. The Regional CoEs are hosted by three IPPF Member Associations: Association Togolaise Pour Le Bien Etre Familial (ATBEF) in Togo (supporting the region of Francophone Africa), Asociación Pro-Bienestar de la Familia Colombiana (Profamilia) in Colombia (supporting the Americas and the Caribbean), and Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) in Ghana (supporting Anglophone Africa). ATBEF, Profamilia and PPAG work closely with Rutgers (Netherlands), the Project Management Unit and IPPF’s global host for Youth Centred Programming.
The objectives of the project are to (i) improve the quality and access to integrated gender and rights-based youth centred SRH services, and to (ii) increase access to and quality of comprehensive sexuality education. The intermediate outcomes are:
The first intermediate outcome supports the CoE’s direct service delivery, education, and community engagement in the respective CoE countries. To achieve this outcome, health care service providers have been trained in SRHR services, teachers, facilitators and peer educators have been trained to deliver gender transformative CSE, young people and community leaders have completed quality assured gender transformative awareness training, and young people have received quality, gender transformative CSE programming and SRHR services.
The second intermediate outcome covers activities to enable others to implement and scale up CSE and SRHR services to young people through capacity sharing and knowledge production at national and regional levels. To achieve this outcome, action plans to disseminate evidence-based solutions for delivery of youth centred programming were developed, youth led accountability mechanisms were established, and youth centred CSE courses and CoE materials were developed, reviewed, adapted, translated for local context, and disseminated.
ATBEF has implemented activities across both outcomes since the start of the project. PPAG and Profamilia joined the project later and initially focused solely on the second outcome.
The project runs from April 2019 to September 2023 and is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
