Partner: UNFPA
Year of Implementation: 2014-2015
In collaboration with UNFPA, this project aimed to strengthen national capacities for community-based interventions in reproductive health to empower women and young people in Sohag. Etijah envisioned an intertwined methodology that brought together Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and based institutional development methods with the UNFPA’s Behavior Change Communication (BCC) strategies. The strength of both methodologies lies in the socio-cultural approaches which place the rights of women, families, and youth at the forefront to build more cohesive and empowered communities.
By building outcomes around sustainable community development through institutional and individual capacity building, the project had the capacity to reach a larger number of community members and paved the way for using the methodologies and tools introduced here for future community-based interventions and initiatives.
The first output of the project targeted 10 NGOs whose members were trained on volunteerism management; they then recruited 20 volunteers who joined the Reproductive Health and Gender Issues workshops. Each 20 volunteers reached 1000 individuals in Sohag, which summed up to 10,000 being the number of the final beneficiaries throughout the entire governorate.
The second output supports the development of Behavior Change Communication (BCC) strategy for women in reproductive age. That stage focused on the implementation of the BCC strategy through recruiting of 240 community leaders, conducting training on sexual and reproductive health education, and identifying the services. The leaders delivered the strategies to married couples in their communities. Each leader was responsible for delivering the strategy to 20 couples to reach 4800 couples in total.