HACEY Health Initiative

Over 60% of Nigeria's population are young people below 25 years. With the COVID-19 pandemic, our already struggling health system is further hit reducing interest and resources for the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs of young people who barely had enough before the pandemic. Currently, our project runs in the southwest region and works with students in 22 tertiary institutions across the region. The Elevate prize will be used to expand the reach of the project to other regions in the country. Over the next 3 years, we intend to expand to 3 other regions in Nigeria. The prize would also support us creating a virtual lab so we can expand the reach to more young people and support their activities in engaging with their governments. Through the lab, we will be able to build the capacities of young people to become advocates, support them in developing campaigns and engaging their leaders. The prize would also go a long way in supporting our engagement with the state in reviewing their health policies to ensure that youth SRH is a priority in service delivery, and in developing an online course for health workers on providing youth SRH services.

Rhoda Robinson is the co-founder and Executive Director of HACEY Health Initiative, a development organization focused on empowering and supporting women and young people. She is an accomplished development practitioner with over 13 years’ experience in developing and implementing high-impact interventions towards addressing societal challenges. She is an advocate for gender equality and equal participation of women and men in decision making at all levels. Her primary interests are gender equality, gender based violence and promoting equal access to health, education, empowerment and rights for women and girls. Rhoda formerly served as a young member of the UK DFID Expert Advisory group on Women and Girls and holds a master’s degree in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She is a fellow of the Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy (AILA) at CSIS, an alumni of the Coady Global Change Leaders Program and an alumni of the United States International Visitors Leadership Program. She is currently leading the United Nations Trust Fund to end Violence against Women funded project on promoting effective implementation of laws and policies and positive community behavioral change to protect women and girls from Female Genital Mutilation.

Nigeria has a youthful population with over 60% under 25 years (>120,000,000). Poor access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, information and commodities leads to increases in unintended pregnancies, STI transmission, unsafe abortions and curtailed dreams for young people. In a study carried out by HACEY, 80% of state-run primary health facilities do not offer SRH services to young, unmarried people; of those that did, most were not youth friendly. Discriminating attitudes and beliefs, poor facilities and inadequate information and services contribute to the low access to and demand for SRH by young people. Our TOMEBY project works with young people to promote the provision of these services for youths and ensure that their voices are reflected in decision making. We build the capacity of young people to amplify their voices using digital media and connect with each other in understanding and demanding their SRH rights. We also work with state and non-state organizations to map youth friendly SRH services, providing this information through our website and chat so it is easier to find youth-friendly services. Our youth advocates work in schools and rural communities to fill the knowledge gap on SRH so young people can make informed decisions.

Our intervention is not just about having young people tell the government what they want and their needs, but also about them taking an active part in evaluating how well those services are being delivered. Most of the time, when young people’s opinions are gathered to respond to their needs, its stops when a strategy/solution is developed. Our interventions continue to push for the involvement of young people in the continuous implementation of that change. Through the project feedback system, young people can share their experience in using existing and created youth-friendly SRH services provided and have their evaluation included in the improvement of that service. The youth technical team works with the state in understanding how best to incorporate the feedback from young people in improving the services and addressing existing challenge. By coordinating the input of young people through generated through different channels and feedback systems, our intervention promote an evolving youth-friendly health system that is able to respond to the needs of young people.

Addressing the challenges preventing young people from accessing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, especially birth control, requires in-depth understanding of the contributing factors and developing targeted responses achieved by working with the stakeholders involved. Since 2015, the TOMBEY project has been directly engaging young people, health service providers and governments as partners towards pulling down these barriers through workshops, seminars and dialogues. We have an open feedback system that supports young people sharing their experiences with us and helping us design the interventions. We are working with five states to support the effectiveness of their health system in providing SRH services for young people. We are supporting the states in developing state-owned digital platforms to increase visibility of available youth-friendly services, pointing the young people in the right direction to get information and services on their sexual and reproductive health. And building the capacity of health workers in state health institutions to understand the SRH needs of young people and provide adequate services to them. The project’s technical advisory board comprising of young people under 30 will work with the different state governments on ensuring that the SRH needs of young people are always on the decision tables.