Youth Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR)
We ensure that young people have; Access to dignity kits by providing hygiene and sanitary products, Provide SGBV survivors with legal services. And we are challenging stigma, discrimination, attitudes, and laws that undermine human rights, including gender stereotypes, women’s rights. Advocacy, capacity-building training, focus group discussions, pledges, Memos, etc.
We address teenage pregnancy causes through training, empowerment programs, workshops and advocating comprehensive sexual health education in the school’s curriculum.
We also offer support services that promote safer sex messages, practices, confidentiality, HIV testing, and support groups throughout the year. The program includes HIV/AIDS Education, health fairs, parties, and film, and more.
Sexual and Gender-based Violence (Second Chance)
We aid and support services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence at every stage of conflict-affected communities in Africa, that is, before, during, and after the fighting. The victims are most often women and adolescent girls and boys. Such violence is common now in the Southwest and Northwest region of Cameroon. In Muyuka, for example, armed conflicts, especially where combatants (Nonstate armed groups) mix up with civilian populations. The impact of violence, especially rape, can be disastrous. Injuries, unwanted pregnancies, sexual dysfunction, STIs, and HIV/AIDS are among the physical consequences. Damage to mental health includes anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide.
We understand GBV survivors suffer from economic hardships, family rejection, feelings of guilt, inadequate attention to their births, little respect, and trouble finding their role as teenage moms. The project “A Second Chance” dignifies their process as they learn to get to know themselves differently, ease their transition from girls into mothers, and support their body awareness and knowledge of their human rights as pregnant women and mothers. We will organize a series of workshops to contribute to social transformation through information, livelihood, arts, a playful methodology, yoga and enable girls to live a transformative pregnancy, birth, and empowered motherhood.
Between now – December 2024, “A Second Chance” will meet over 600 young girls (abused pregnant and teen mothers) living in conflict-affected areas. The activities include workshops, cash-based assistance to support essential sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and emergency needs for pregnant teens in labor and host families.
PEP Africa staff is the lead, and Restless Peace Coalition members significantly contributed to this project’s design. PEP AFRICA collaborates with UNFPA, INEOS, and UNHCR to coordinate efforts across sectors with staff involved in protection, security, community, and health services. Implementation is base on their extensive network and relationship with the broader community and local humanitarian actors operational in the target area.
Menstrual Health Management (Lifestyle Initiative)
We support young people living in slums who deserve the opportunity to go to school and benefit from an education. Still, the obstacles associated with poverty sometimes get in the way. For tens of thousands of young women living in slums in Cameroon, their monthly period causes them to miss more than six weeks of school a year because they do not have a pad. Research shows that sanitary pads and health education can reduce absenteeism by 75%. The project may be the most cost-effective means of fostering personal and community development in developing countries by educating and empowering teenage girls. For less than $5.00, you can change the life of a girl.
Menstruation often derails their dreams when they may miss weeks of school at a time. Force early marriages that blight their goals and shrink their world. Many girls in rural areas often drop out of school when they reach puberty because they have limited access to feminine hygiene products. They need access to affordable sanitary feminine products. When a family’s entire income is a dollar a day, spending even $3 a month per girl for conventional menstrual pads is unaffordable. In many rural villages, young girls must improvise, using bark, mud, plastic bags, napkins, tissue paper, cotton, or wet newspaper, and more Some sit in the sand, causing flea-borne infections. They need access to affordable sanitary feminine products.
“the lifestyle” initiative assist girls in need by producing reusable pads and delivering them to poor communities, often along with health and hygiene classes. In these communities, volunteers also teach women and teenage girls to make their pads, provide donated materials and supplies, and teach sewing skills while enabling them to continue their education even during their menstrual periods. Educating teenage girls is the most effective means of improving their lives and fostering economic development.
THE GOAL is: Supporting the school administration, encouraging teachers to enhance educational programs, and raising funds to supplement existing programs and structures by the end of 2024.