In support of the Every Woman Every Child updated Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health (2016-2030):
- The Côte d’Ivoire SAFE ENGAGE team launched the first country ENGAGE presentation, Pas une seule femme refoulée, at an event attended by over 60 people. The presentation has been shown more than 14 times, and these efforts have generated commitments such as pledges from members of Parliament to convince their colleagues to adopt policy changes for safe abortion. Women’s Action Group in Zimbabwe has begun dissemination of the ENGAGE presentation, Breaking the Silence: Expanding Access to Safe Abortion in Zimbabwe, to decisionmakers and influencers and has already reached hundreds in policy audiences. This broad-based dissemination effort is designed to ensure that key leaders understand and are committed to addressing safe abortion issues.
- PRB’s EEDA project completed packages of advocacy materials for partners in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The completed packages include videos, policy briefs, fact sheets, infographics, and a comic book addressing advocacy objectives to expand access to a range of contraceptive methods, increase and implement financial commitments to family planning, and promote youth-friendly reproductive health services. As a result of ongoing advocacy in Nairobi County, to which EEDA activities and youth advocates have made significant contributions, the 2019/2020 health sector budget’s reproductive health allocation has been increased by 26 million KES to 100 million and the YFS budget has been increased from 3 million KES to 5 million.
- PRB updated the Youth Family Planning Policy Scorecard to include six new countries in the 2020 edition. The World Health Organization and FP2020 featured the 2019 edition at regional family planning meetings throughout the year. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this signature product tracks indicators of youth-friendly family planning services across 22 countries in Africa and Asia.
- PACE-trained youth advocates in northern Nigeria secured policy commitments from state leaders by creating and disseminating compelling, evidence-based advocacy videos focused on ending child marriage and increasing access to youth family planning services. PACE Kenya’s ongoing budget advocacy technical assistance to Busia and Samburu county governments helped ward off proposed budget cuts for health services, including family planning, and the associated advocacy actually increased budget allocations to health programs.
- PRB, with support and guidance from the We Decide Program and a technical advisory group (TAG) chaired by the UNFPA, developed an ENGAGE multimedia presentation titled The Path to Equality for Women and Young Persons With Disabilities: Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Ending Gender-Based Violence. This presentation describes the necessary policy changes and investments needed for women and young persons with disabilities to fully realize their SRHR and be protected from gender-based violence perpetuated against them. Three versions of the print materials were created to ensure full accessibility to audiences: braille, audio descriptive, and a version tagged for use with assistive technology. Since the presentation was launched, it has been disseminated by PRB, TAG members, and various partners via social media and has been featured in several technical newsletters and a blog post by META, reaching thousands of people.
