The high rate of adolescent pregnancy and child marrige in Sierra Leone is preventing young girls and young women from realising their full potential in all aspects of thier development. Despite the government’s efforts to tackle these issues, particularly through the establishment in 2013 of a National Secretariat for the Reduction of Teenage Pregnancy and the development of the National Strategy for the Reduction of Teenage Pregnancy, significant progress still needs to be made.
The strategy is organized around six pillars with the following strategic objectives:
Pillar 1: Policy and legal environment
To improve the policy and legal environment for the protection of adolescents and to improve the capacity of implementing agencies to implement laws, policies, and protocols affecting adolescents.
Pillar 2: Adolescent and young people friendly services
To ensure that a minimum package of AYPF healthcare services is provided in peripheral health units (PHUs) including outreach services, hospitals, schools, and learning centres.
Pillar 3: Enabling school environments
To ensure all adolescents have access to CSE and that the learning environment is enabling for adolescent girls and boys to thrive.
Pillar 4: Communication and advocacy
To increase demand for AYPF services.
Pillar 5: Community ownership
To engage with communities and empower them so that they take individual and collective responsibility for the reduction of adolescent pregnancy and child marriage.
Pillar 6: Coordination, monitoring, and evaluation
To ensure that the strategy’s activities are well coordinated, monitored, and evaluated, and that evidence is generated and used to inform decision-making.
If adolescent pregnancy prevention is to become a priority, then our strategy, as advocates, must contain two key elements: civic engagement and education.
Patricia Bah
Program Manager and National Coordinator
Want to collaborate with us?
Let us work together and change the lives of Teenage girls being affected and those who want to be better and greater. We are ready and eager to work with you!