India: Adolescent Girl Outreach Program

Empower Adolescent Girls With Catapult

January 29, 2016

India Initiative Reports

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Empower Adolescent Girls With Catapult

A year ago RMF backed the project Empower Adolescent Girls in India with Catapult: Action for Equality. On September 1, 2012, Real Medicine Foundation (RMF) conducted a workshop of 44 adolescent girls in the community hall in Bhagyapur Village. With the help of two books and a cirriculum published by the National Level Government Organization for the Purpose of Adolescent Education, the content of the workshop was created. The content covered: What is Adolescence?, the Changes in Adolescence – Physical, Emotional, Psychological and Social, Anemia, Diet in Adolescence, Menstrual Cycle vs Myths & Misconceptions, Personal Hygiene.

The highlight of the day was a play enacted by RMF facilitators that centered on a village girl who has attained puberty and had started experiencing stress and confusions about sudden changes in her body. She approached the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (village nurse) and the ASHA clarified her doubts, answered her questions, and ensured her that there was nothing abnormal in those changes. The girls could relate themselves to the character of the girl in the role-play and respond very well to the example.

Building on that mini experiment & in-continuation, Catapult fund enabled RMF to train 19 project management staff including CNE's on adolescents health hygiene & sanitation theme for conducting & managing in-school workshops. In the process, RMF CNE's carried out 497 school sessions at 67 schools across 3 districts & santize 131 teachers. At the end of October 2015 the RMF team had successfully trained 1,966 in-school girls against the project target of 1,500.

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Background

RMF’s outreach workers (Community Nutrition Educators, CNEs) for our Malnutrition Eradication Program cover 600 villages and counsel pregnant and lactating women on their diet and care in addition to the mothers and families of malnourished children. The counseling of adolescent girls however remains a critical gap in the community, both in general reproductive health as well as nutrition. Since malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh does not exist in a vacuum, RMF’s team in India in 2012 started thinking of ways to reach these girls.

Objectives

Conduct workshops at 50 schools, reaching approximately 1,500 students.
Distribute brochures and pamphlets on adolescence, nutrition, and maternal health to 1,500 adolescent girls.
Train an RMF staff of 50 on adolescence and other topics for school workshops.

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