The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Meaningful involvement of youths and adolescents in SRH programs

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It is critical to involve youths and adolescents in Sexual and Reproductive health programming if programmers and implementers want to make an impact and have results. Youths and adolescents should be involved in a meaningful way from programme design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This will allow youths and adoelscents to have a stake in the process and also claim ownership of the programmes that benefit them. A notable example has been an organisation called Midlands AIDS Service Organisation (MASO) in Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. MASO worked with adolescents under a UNICEF project called Young People We Care programme. Youths and Adolescents both In and Out of School were involved in determining what priority activities and deliveranles should be included and there was constant tracking of deliverables with meaningful youths participation. That allowed the correctiona nd identification of any deviations from the expected deliverables and also any challenges that might have been anticipated or overlooked.

The results were amazing with youths setting priorities for the project and highlighting that sanitary pads were a priority for adolescent girls than books and other school materials which programmers had thought were important. This brought lots of lessons learnt and enabled development of future proposals based on needs on the ground fro youths and adolescents.

It brings the motto "Anything for youths without youths is against youths!"

Enock Musungwini

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Submitted by dsomefun on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 23:48 Permalink

These are valid points! -  Meaningful involvement of youths and adolescents in SRH programs by Enock Musungwini  


Would also like to add that; simply having a youth program within an organization does not necessarily guarantee meaningful youth participation. Also, some organizations bring on young people; as volunteers or as non-paid or low-paid interns (which is ok for experience) but may eventually demotivate youth.

Capacity building is important for young people so they can be involved in organizational leadership and managerial positions. Youth occupying managerial positions may provide more effective options in;advocating for adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights at various levels!