Feminist Adolescent and Youth-led Action
Feminist Adolescent and Youth-led Action (FAYA) is a community-based program which is being implemented since October 2018 in four districts of Rajasthan—Bundi, Dungarpur, Karauli and Tonk. The program aims to disseminate culturally appropriate Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) with adolescents along with building youth-led campaigns and dialogues with various stakeholders for improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) services.
The program has a two-fold approach
- Dissemination of CSE-related knowledge and information to adolescents in the intervention villages.
- Creation of an enabling environment for increased access to ASRH services by engaging youth leaders or champions in undertaking targeted advocacy with support from the FAYA program teams.
Achievements
- A Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum was developed in consonance with the UNESCO technical guidelines for transacting with adolescents in intervention geographies. The curriculum received endorsement from the concerned RKSK division of the Department of Medical, Health and Family Welfare, Government of Rajasthan prior to its use in the field.
- The curriculum, comprising 13 sessions, was transacted to more than 10,000 adolescent boys and girls across 200 villages by trained field teams.
- Additionally, 21,557 adolescents also received some information related to the most pertinent content from the curriculum through a cohort of 1,873 peer educators referred to as Kishor Mitras. This cohort had previously received complete curriculum knowledge and was selected to disseminate it with their peers further.
- Educately, an online portal (Knowledge Hub) has been developed to offer a training programme for teachers to equip them for effective transactions with adolescents on SRH issues. This program is called ARSH for You. The portal received over 192,000 visits and 4,652 programme enrolments till 31st March, 2022.
- Four community-led and owned Super Saathi Kendra (SSK) have been established (one in each geography at a village/school level) to offer a safe space for adolescents to convene, learn and engage in meaningful discourse on health-related topics as well as be able to receive counselling and care from designated counsellors.
- Lastly, events were held across villages where there was greater need for sensitization,which included PRI members. These events helped in creating an amicable environment for transaction of CSE curriculum with adolescents.
