Woman2Woman

The high rate of teenage pregnancy and high school dropout amongst females is a specific problem that Woman2Woman is working to address. Additionally, females staying out of school and other important assemblies during menstruation due to poor or limited menstrual hygiene and SRHR knowledge is another specific problem that Woman2Woman is working to address. This problem is on a high scale because SRHR and menstrual hygiene education is not inclusive in the primary and secondary school curricula. Moreover, relevant education and material support for less fortunate teenagers in rural and marginalized communities are absent. To manage menstrual periods, many teenage girls will skip school and use unhygienic menstrual commodities like clothes. Approximately 90% or teenage girls in rural communities don’t understand that menstruation is their fundamental rights and thus, need not to be ashamed to speak about it or shy away from others during their periods.

Unplanned and early pregnancy remains one the main factors jeopardizing the rights, health, education, and potential of the Girl Child in Liberia as 30 percent of young women aged 15-19 are already mothers or are pregnant with their first child. Girls with little or no education are at the worst end of the teenage pregnancy rate in Liberia, as 47 percent have begun childbearing, compared with 20 percent of those who attended senior high school (UNFPA Liberia, 2017).

Woman2Woman is aimed at addressing poor menstrual hygiene, limited SRHR knowledge amongst female teenagers from rural communities in Liberia, thus, reducing the rate of teenage pregnancy and high school dropout amongst them. Our project will also lead to the decline in the overall incidence of teenage pregnancies among girls, age 15-19 years;

My solution is focused on the establishment of SRHR clubs in public schools in rural and marginalized communities in Liberia that would train teenagers to provide SRHR education and care to their peers and distribute SRHR commodities to teenagers. The project will empower teenagers with SRHR knowledge and those teenagers will in turn establish SRHR Clubs in their various schools to train educate their peers, provide SRHR care, create awareness about the negative effect of teenage pregnancy and encourage teenagers to practice menstrual hygiene and remain in school during their periods. 

My solution seeks to target teenagers from rural and marginalized communities in Liberia who are students from public schools. In Liberia, public schools accompany mostly students of less-fortunate parents. These schools are less attended to in terms of educational supplies, and modernization.

Teenagers from these communities are underserved because Liberia’s development is centralized and most LNGOs and INGOs concentrate their projects on beneficiaries from urban communities because rural and marginalized communities are less accessible, has limited or no access to electricity and pipe borne water, poor internet access and poor living standards.

In order to address these needs, my solution will empower teenagers who are residents of marginalized and rural communities to incorporate and promote peer-to-peer awareness among them. My solution will also integrate dramatization and storytelling within its awareness to encourage the participation of teenagers. Additionally, my solution will provide SRHR commodities and provide users’ direction for the use of those commodities. My solution will develop customized SRHR documents (flyers, banners, manuals) to help guide teenagers even in our absence. 

We are the right people to design and deliver this solution to the target population because our organization is a local NGO that is buttressing the Liberian government’s efforts to achieve its goals by planning and implementing community and youth development programs. We have since its existence, implemented at least 63 programs which have impacted over 250,000 beneficiaries including students, youth leaders, at-risk youth, and children in Liberia and across Africa.

Moreover, the presence of our organization is felt in our targeted communities and some of our works have been featured in renowned newspapers and on the social media page of the US Embassy in Liberia (https://bit.ly/3qDCdfO) and FrontPage Africa (https://bit.ly/3sMvQVh)  

My team and I have collaborated with others and we have received grants and successfully implement two international projects. One of these projects is ‘Survivors Spotlight’, a project that created awareness about the coronavirus in Liberia and beyond by airing the stories of COVID-19 survivors in Liberia (https://bit.ly/3sMvQVh).

To understand the need of our beneficiaries, we usually design surveys and conduct investigation among them. We also implement mini projects to create a bond between project beneficiaries and our team

My design and implementation of my solution is meaningfully guided by the communities’ input, ideas, and agendas because we collaborate with schools’ administrators to implement programs and design program feedback forms that beneficiaries respond to which help us incorporate their ideas into our solutions and make them feel part of the solution. 

My solution is innovative because it uses a peer-centered approach to address issues confronting teenage girls. It will instill theoretical and practical knowledge in teenage girls who will in turn train and empower their peers on SRHR. In order to catalyze broader positive impacts from others in this space, my solution will integrate existing ideas and concepts into ours and leverage the availability of experts who have been working in the field. With this, teenagers will be empowered to educate their peers about SRHR and how to address issues confronting the subject matter. Though we are not leveraging a new technology, we will integrate the use of technology to build a stronger bond among students and our project team members. This will include but not limited to creating a facebook page for our project, creating a group-chat for project beneficiaries to enable them to exchange progress, knowledge, and ideas.

My impact goal for my solution is to empower at least 2,000 teenage female students in rural and marginalize communities with SRHR knowledge in in the next one year. Additionally, to establish SRHR clubs in at least 50 schools in these communities. This will be achieved by hosting small- and large-scale workshops and trainings to empower teenage female students with SRHR and to have beneficiaries empower their peers at school and community levels. My solution’s goals seek to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes which aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals #3 target 3.7. Moreover, the goal of my solution supports the UN Sustainable Development Goal #5 target 5.6 that seeks to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences. 

I expect my solution to have an impact because it empowers those affected by the challenges to be involved with the solution of the challenges. My solution will be implemented in marginalized communities where access to SRHR education and awareness absent or limited. With the provision of SRHR knowledge to teenage female students, they will understand that menstruation is their rights, keep in school when they are on their periods and practice good menstrual hygiene. Subsequently, the establishment of SRHR clubs in schools will create the need for the inclusion of SRHR contents in the national curriculum and create awareness that will encourage stakeholders to take positive actions to mitigate the challenges confronting teenagers during their periods. 

There are nine persons working fulltime on my solution:

1. Linda T. Kai, (F) Team Leader

2. Sunnie Antonio Marcar, Jr, (M), Assistant 

3. Marlyne T. Diah, (F), Member

4. Princess David, (F) Member 

5. Neejay N. Lewis (F), Member

6. Fatu Fahnbulleh, (F), Member

7. James K. Wilson, (M), Member

8. Mariam Dukuly, (F), Member

19 Benefit C. Roberts (F), Member

10. Annita S. Morlue, (F), Member

Less than a year

My approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into my work is to include people from different religion into my project team. For example, a few members of my project team are from the Islamic religion and we are comprised of people of mixed background. Additionally, we will be working in communities where few members of my team come from. This will make communication effective because they are able to speak the tribe of the people residing in those communities. Also, the project will not be doing random sampling to recruit beneficiaries but will include all within the sample population. The project will not discriminate against teenage fameless based on tribe, religion, or culture but will incorporate every teenager in the setting (public school) we select.

To be diverse, we have selected marginalized and rural communities as the setting in which our project will be implemented and to work with less fortunate students from public schools in these communities.

We will create an inclusive online and in-person awareness about the project and ensure that no one is discriminated against.  

Business-to-Customer model is my approach because I will be dealing directly with teenage female students from within the various locations. My model will also incorporate concepts and best approach based on situational analysis for the different locations. The project will educate teenage female students about menstrual hygiene and provide them with sanitary commodities to promote good menstrual hygiene practices amongst them. These teenagers will train their peers through the SRHR clubs that will be established in schools. 

As a voluntary non-profit organization, my solution uses the free-for-service business model. I will be measuring Key success factors by establishing appropriate fee structure vis a vis the benefits and beneficiaries.