World KNOWS HER2

Girls in East Africa face several challenges that limit their ability to lead self-directed lives. These challenges include pressure for early marriage, pressure to have unwanted sex in exchange for food-shelter-protection, teen pregnancy, and HIV/AIDS infection, which negatively impacts their health and well-being. Additionally, girls in East Africa often face limitations when it comes to completing their education, which can further limit their opportunities in life. Many of these girls are growing up in poverty and have low social inclusion due to birth family illness, loss of parents, and being one of many in a large family that can no longer support them.

Child marriage and teen pregnancy have negative health, social, and development consequences. The highest rates of child marriage occur in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with 40% of women in Western and Central Africa getting married before the age of eighteen. Interventions aimed at building educational assets, life skills and health assets, wealth building interventions, and community dialogue were effective in reducing child marriage and teen pregnancy. However, only a few interventions were consistently effective across the studies included. 

Another study found that nearly 4% of girls in Central Africa had their first birth before age 15 in 2015, compared to the 2.5% in Eastern Africa and 1% in Southern Africa. All four regions showed declines during 2000–2015, most prominently for sexual debut before age 15 (both girls and boys) and marriage (girls). (References at end of this section.)

Girls need information and resources to be aware of their vulnerability during the pre-teen and teen years. Hearing from women role models and safe opportunities to communicate with peers, near peers, and cross-age youth both in Africa and other countries will make a significant positive difference in the thoughts and actions of girls in SSA. Girls in SSA need to experience a change in thinking and new normalization so that they can develop solidarity with other girls across the world and feel their strength in numbers.

Having basic life needs met - food, clothing, shelter, education, health, digital inclusion (social determinants of health) - are critical for girls to have a chance at being in control of their sexual and reproductive health.

References:  
Adolescent sexual and reproductive health for all in sub‑Saharan Africa: a spotlight on inequalities; and Inequalities in early marriage, childbearing and sexual debut among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa, 17 June 2021, Venkatraman Chandra‑Mouli, Sarah Neal and Ann‑Beth Moller, https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1186/s12978...

UNFPA, Adolescent and Youth Demographics, A Brief Overview; https://www.unfpa.org/resource...

The solution proposed, World KNOWS HER2 has four parts.

1. A network of older female youth, young women, and independent women available in-person and via a private LinkedIn Group and Wix Spaces App. Local to the first site, groups at the secondary school will invite a different local woman to talk with them once or twice each month.
   Technology: E-mail and LinkedIn accounts and profiles will be created for the first time for the youth leaders in Kisubi, Uganda
   
   The Private LinkedIn Group is at https://www.linkedin.com/group...
   YTB Social-Digital-Educational Inclusion

   
   

   

2. Awareness information is being made available through paper brochures, posters, flyers coupled with a social media campaign for YTB KNOWS HER2 using techniques of digital storytelling and learning about PhotoVoice. Information will be shared between a school(s) in the US with the school(s) in Uganda.
   Technology: Use of mobile devices and cell phone cameras made available for the first time for the youth leaders in Kisubi, Uganda. Canva For Nonprofits Teams accounts are being set up for the youth leaders. These youth will have an opportunity to use shared resource technology to make simple graphic designs, webpages, and post about their solution to social media -- all for the first time.
3. An international audio interview series is starting in November 2023 that includes youth and young adults in SSA and USA. Girls in SSA will gain the digital inclusion needed to participate. A technology kiosk is being planned for a small resource library where the WKH2 youth leaders live as boarders. This project is their first exposure to using technology.
   Technology: WhatsApp audio recording, internet access. Learning to work with simple websites on Wix Studio and Canva Sites. Opportunity to earn "badges" on Wix Spaces
4. Biannual gathering and dialogue of youth in SSA and participating areas of the US: a refugee organization in Tampa, Florida; invited schools in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
   Technology: Experience participating and managing virtual meetings, with Zoom and Teams and-or Google Meet, for the very first time. Introduction to basic video recording techniques for telling their stories. Use of simple polling and survey tools to collect data on project activity.

   
   

   
   Registration: https://tinyurl.com/Feb18Youth 

   
   
   

   YTB is a shared vision of people who work towards projects for good and build solidarity across peers, near-peers, and generations. Our efforts build strengths, share time, service, resources, opportunities, and establish social and community connections. YTB is in several locations and based on the Timebanking values of each person is an asset, all work is valued, reciprocity, social connections, and respect. Community CALM is a flexible framework for structuring participation. C represents service with others, A is for application of digital technology, L means learning, literacy, understanding; and M stands for make and hands-on activities in the physical world. Anyone can participate in YTB. Attention is given to safety and youth development. We grow and develop from where we are.

World KNOWS HER2 will improve the lives of girls of middle- and high-school age initially in Central Uganda. Our next outreach will be rural schools in Migori County, Kenya, and a more urban district in deprived areas of Yaoundé Cameroon. We have potential to also connect with youth in Sierra Leone. We expect to positively influence the futures of girls in refugee families living in Tampa, Florida. We believe our solution would scale and positively impact other refugee communities as well as refugee settlements in Uganda, Kenya, and other parts of SSA.

The youth leaders for WKH2 - Madrine, Victoria, Akram - have expressed their concerns and observations of the pressures girls face in their high school and in the earlier grades. We have also heard from youth in a middle school in Kisowera where Girl Up Kisowera was established in 2017. Several youths were guided through a resource and vision development exercise. Girls as young as 12 years old have directly expressed their concerns for the risks and pressures pre-teen girls face for having sex, risk of pregnancy, and risk for both STDs and HIV.

Girls in poor, rural communities in SSA are at risk. Due to poverty and limited community healthcare services these girls are chronically underserved. The solution is a form of co-production. With co-production, individuals affected by the needed services play a lead role in designing, developing, and delivering a solution. Youth A.R.E. = Assets + Resources + Energy. WHK2 is a co-produced solution through youth-adult-professional partnership. 

Youth leaders are learning how to be leaders now, as their need is urgent. Madrine, Victoria, and Akram are learning how to be the change as they are being the change. They are learning methods of Liberating Structures to enlist their peers so that everyone is involved. They are striving for collective action and while that is a slow, uphill process they are leading by example. They are co-producing small ripples of positive change in bringing attention to the need for resources for health education and reproductive rights, as well as child protection in their community.

World KNOWS HER2 follows a foundational timebanking-driven-co-production approach and applies methods of Liberating Structures to involve everyone interested and affected by the unmet needs and dilemma of gender inequity that we are addressing.

Our team has lived experience. And they attend school and live with girls affected by the lack of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information, commodities, and services. Our team is meeting with our peers and younger youth where we live and attend school and church services.

Our team is engaging girls in small groups at our high school and where we live as boarders. We are coached and counseled by community leaders, heads of schools, and US leadership in youth timebanking.

The design and implementation of our YTB KNOWS HER2 solution is guided by our familiarity with how youth-adult partnerships have worked within YTB Global. We have seen remarkable success and progress with youth-adult projects as rural schools in Central Uganda. We are energized by the recent experience of an international collaboration with a refugee community in Tampa, Florida. We are confident we can do what we intend to do. We understand train-the-trainer approaches for sustainability, and we have a pipeline of peer-to-peer, near-peer, cross-age, youth-adult, intergenerational and professional coaches to help and advise us.

We are in the early stage of testing our solution and will be reporting on our progress at a virtual youth event scheduled for February 18, 2024.