Leaders for Reproductive Health project
This project is aimed at the improvement of reproductive health situations in northern Nigeria, especially among women and young people through leadership consensus
building; reproductive health service delivery and integrated leadership development programmes. This involves selecting leaders from all works of life, equip them with reproductive health knowledge, develop their leadership skill and encourage them to form groups, become advocates for RH of young people and the family. This is aimed at developing leaders who will promote positive youth behavior and reproductive health in the society.
Traditional Leaders and Their Wives Promoting Family Health
The program started with the leaders in mixed population groups analysing the reproductive situation in their states using the future search technique. The definition of terms and clarification of issues on sexuality, child spacing, reproductive health, and gender was necessary at this point. They were subsequently trained on full reproductive health issues including leadership skills and issues of violence against persons. The use of group dynamics was encouraged and supported as well as step down trainings in their various communities using implementation plans developed by the leaders with follow up monitoring by AHIP.. The training was conducted in 12 northern states (Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Borno, Gombe, Yobe, Bauchi, Benue, and Jigawa.).
Strategies
The reproductive leaders programme was expanded to take a new dimension of training traditional leaders as advocates and supporters of reproductive health issues in their communities. The trained traditional leaders are expected to disseminate the factual information to their friends, families, and community at large.
Topics addressed at this training includes: Leadership Style, Leadership and Reproductive Health, Reproductive Anatomy and Physiology; Stages of development; Sexually Transmitted Infections/ HIV/AIDS; Gender and HIV/AIDS, Drug Abuse and it’s social Implication; Communication; Child Spacing and Contraception; Communication and Advocacy; Violence against persons; Teenage Pregnancy; Team building and problem solving; Managing change; Planning for social change; Action plan development.
Objective of the training includes:
- To sensitize leaders and their wives on leadership, reproductive health and its components, male involvement in reproductive health; sex & sexuality, STIs, HIV/AIDS, gender and HIV/AIDS, importance of child spacing.
- To form groups among Traditional leaders for advocacy on Reproductive Health (RH) in the state.
- To identify RH issues in the state and develop strategies to address them