Solution for Her

Problem: In the Sierra Leone alone, there are over 1million low-income, minority students who are falling behind by 2 years compared to their peers. If every parent is fully involved in their students’ education, all students can succeed at school - academic research shows that parent engagement predicts a student’s academic success twice as much as how rich that family is. Unfortunately, in undeserved or marginalized communities, families face multiple but surmountable barriers to actively engaging. Parents themselves don’t have the same educational background or level as the teachers, which lead to mutual misconceptions, made worse when they don’t speak the same language. Teachers and parents in these communities are also busy, are rarely adequately trained or educated. So while students spend more than 70% of their time outside school, parents struggle to work with their children to best support them

Solution: Solution for Her helps parents, students and teachers build partnerships with each other through information and resources availability in the hard-to-reach communities by establishing SRHR hubs where adolescent girls and boys as well as young women, parents and teachers receive significant information that enables the respective groups of individuals promote and manage challenges of SRHR in their local communities.

Solution for Her has three major components.

• Connecting parents with their student’s teachers and with each other so that they can build trusting, respectful relationships through effective communication, without language, teaching or cultural barriers through the two-way translated communication platform, liking them to the Solution for her centres for mentorship exercise for transformation in SRHR practising in these challenging communities.
• Training educators through in-product nudges and coaching modules that help them work with parents and students.
• Educating the parents on how best to help the children both at home with their learning and how best to engage with their children based on personalized content and chatbot-like experience around SRHR.

We provide personalized education/training for both parents and teachers depending on who they are, who the student is, how they have behaved in the past, what the topic of conversation is between teachers and parents, what’s been learnt in the classroom and past behaviour. Educators and parents get coaching at the centre when it is actionable. For example, a parent can start communicating in their own languages with their child’s teacher, and suggest to the parent what actionable steps they can take to ensure help the child with certain SRHR needs. Parents and teachers are also able to communicate in their own languages freely in the communities, by using the Solution for Her Centre.

 Directly, the project will youth girls below 16 years, those from 16 to 24 years and young women above 25 years old from marginalized rural communities in Sierra Leone. The solution will unlock the incredible yet untapped potential of parents, families and teachers to support their children's learning and help them address the unmet need for sexual reproductive health and rights. The solution will impact the target participants by expanding  Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights facilities to their doorsteps, enabling them to overcome challenges faced in getting access to Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights. Through this solution, over 3000 adolescent girls will stay in school, learn with their peers and become effective without missing classes and examinations during their menstruation.

The solution will also impact the project beneficiaries through good sexual and reproductive health by ensuring gender equality, respect, safety and freedom from discrimination, violence and stigma that is associated with lack of good SRHR care and practices.
The solution will impact the project beneficiaries by promoting and supporting positive, respectful, non-coercive and safe sexual relationships and reproductive choices ( Including planned, safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth among women in the project target communities.
The project will impact the communities by improving knowledge and awareness of factors that affect the ability to conceive a child and increase access to contemporary, safe and equitable fertility control services to enable Victorians to exercise their reproductive rights.

Reduce sexually transmissible infections and blood-borne viruses through prevention, testing, treatment, care and support.Work towards eliminating HIV and viral hepatitis transmission and significantly increase treatment rates.Reduce and eliminate stigma, including homophobia, transphobia and biphobia.

The project implementation team in CASD-SL are 89% professional with good Academic records. 80% of all team members are University graduates from reputable Universities in Sierra Leone and out of Siera Leone. In the team, there also staff with Master Degrees, and professional experiece in health programs, project Management, gender,social Entrepreneurship, Accounting, Social Works and ITC. Many of the team members have worked for national and international non-governmental organization with vast experience in women and girls empowerments.
Our Proximity to the Communities:  CASD-SL  is a grassroot organization that was established on the foundation of community development through women, youth and girls empwerment. The project idea is designed at the  centre of the needs  of the  communities.Meaning, the community stakeholders such as the chiefd, the mammy queens, the headmen, the societal and traditional heads, the Male Advocate Peer Educators, Community Health Workers ( CHWs) whom together with CASD-SL collectively identified the problem and propounded this solution for the benefits of the communities, with our collaborative concern to promote women, and girls' empowerments. 
Inclusively, the project design phase also captured vulnerable and marginalized young women and adolescent girls in schools and out of school that are going through difficulties for getting access to SRHR. Their recommendation to bring SRHR hubs in their communities was highly considered in this design.

Connectively, there is a partnership link between CASD-SL and the health institutions in the proposed communities, as well with the other significant agencies such as Ministry of Social Welfare, Ministry of children's Affairs and youth council, who will be involved in this project execution.

In Summary, there is community proximity and link for the effective implementation and project result delivery under this solution.

This solution in the last year reaches out to 780 adolescent girls and young women in rural communities through SRHR services using community-based mentorship activities. 570 vulnerable adolescent girls living in hard-to-reach communities were supported with reusable menstrual pads, which kept them in schools and learned with their peers during their menstruation periods. 370 community stakeholders, which include the chiefs, women leaders, mammy Queens, youth leaders, teachers and Community health workers received training on community-based strategies for empowering sexual and reproductive health for women and girls living in deprived and marginalized communities in Bo District, Southern Sierra Leone. Established five Male Advocate Peer Educators MAPEs) groups in five communities, who serve as SRHR advocates in their respective communities.

This solution is unique and innovative in the sense that CASD-SL is the first locally based organization with this designed initiative to localise sustainable solutions that will address SRHR problems affecting women and girls in very challenging communities, using community-based human and non-human resources. Compared to others who hire experts outside the communities, and source materials from outside, the CASD-SL solution will build a sustainable community-owned  SRHR system, that will be managed by the affected populations. Significantly, the solution will design and resource base SRHR hubs, with technology through online information sharing from both ends, from the service users and the hubs centre manager, informing the managers of the specific needs before they visit the hubs. E.G, if the visitor needs counselling, she will keep the hub manager alert through the online platform. The same for the service of reusable menstrual pads and other SRHR services.

Our impact goal for this solution is to see that half a  million plus vulnerable communities especially adolescents school going girls and young women and in rural communities enjoy SRHR freedom that will enhance their chances and opportunities to live, interact, grow healthy, and take full responsibility for the proper management of their SRHR using the skills, knowledge and resources provided by this solution. We envisage creating a strong partnership that will result in the reduction of inequality, promote gender equality and quality education and good health and wellbeing among women and girls living in vulnerable rural communities. We envisage to acheive this in the next five years through community engagement, capacity building in SRHR infrastructures in the deprived communities, reaching out more women and girls going through challenges with low experience, knowledge and skills , poor SRHR facilities in the deprived communities, aiming to keep more girls in school and improve on their interaction and participation levels among their peers during their menstruation periods. Improve on the health conditions of girls and young women by reducing the STD  cases in our communities.

Problem :

Over 2 million adolescent girls and young women living in the vulnerable rural communities in Sierra Leone lack quality and affordable access to Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, causing them low esteem, school dropout and infection with diseases.

Building community infrastructure through community based hubs with SRHR resources and tools will enbale every adolescent and youth, in particular to get access and empowered to have access to sexual and reproductive
health and reproductive rights in all the right contexts.Through this solution, there will be a  universal access to sexual and reproductive health, ensuring
reproductive rights, and reduce maternal mortality, accelerate progress and  improve the lives of adolescents, and young women,enabled population dynamics, human rights and gender equality.Access, coverage, quality and safety of sexual and reproductive health services get improved.

Throgh Skills and capabilities provision by this solution, women and girls will be able to make  informed choices about sexual and reproductive health and rights and well-being improved, including through comprehensive sexuality education, and improve opportunities to exercise and participate in sustainable development,  sustaining peace and preventing Gender-based violence and harmful practices including child marriage
and female genital mutilation.

The solution has 15 team members from the selected communities and is defined by the community stakeholder during the solution ideation meeting.

The team have been working on this solution for the past 30 months .

The solution catptures the contributions and full engagement of diversity of members from diffrent parts of society in Sierra Leone. There is a representation of the people with Disability,different tribe men and women  who will play significant roles in enhancing delivery in the developed solution to ensure accessibility to SRHR opportunities in the rural communities.

Solution For Her helps parents, students, and teachers build partnerships with each other through information sharing and resources mobilization in hard-to-reach communities by establishing SRHR hubs where adolescent girls and boys as well as young women, parents and teachers receive significant information that enable them promote and manage challenges of SRHR in their communities.

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