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School’s Out: Linking Schools to Sexual Reproductive Health Support and Services

27 August 2020
14:00 - 14:28

EVENT: Linking Schools to Sexual Reproductive Health Support and Services
DATE: Thursday, 27th August 2020
TIME: 13:45 (tech run) for 14:00 (live)

Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/96281309488?pwd=dXROTHpDT0gwZW1wSDhsSUgyR0VBUT09

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) is implementing a two-and-a-half-year project to link schools to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) support and services. Funded by AmplifyChange, the School’s Out project responds to existing gaps in the provision of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) projects and programmes.

Empirical evidence suggests that progress has been made in the last 20 years; however, a myriad of hindrances to effective adolescents’ SRHR programmes remain. A significant proportion of adolescents are not adequately reached by the interventions intended for them. Also, interventions shown to be effective have limited effect because they are delivered in a piecemeal approach.

Emerging evidence shows that comprehensive sexuality education improves adolescents’ SRH knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors when implemented well. This evidence also recommends a need to accelerate proven approa che s and for the deve lopment of complementary approaches.

The focus on linking schools to SRH support and services is further motivated by the views that adolescents’ and young people’s SRH status and educational achievements are closely related and that schools have infrastructure and tools to encourage the formation of SHR-healthy behaviour.

The ultimate goal of the School’s Out project is to develop a model to guide efforts on linking schools to SRH support and services in Eastern and Southern Africa, resulting in schools as safer and inclusive environments. The School’s Out project is therefore embarking on two weeks digital campaign to set policy agenda on linking schools to SRH support and services.

Call to action

As we gear up for the launch of the School’s Out Linking Schools to SRH support and services campaign, please take a moment to like and share the channels below with your networks and communications teams. The campaign will start with an activation which will last two weeks, during that time, content will be pushed via the social media channels in each of the 8 countries namely Botswana, Eswatini, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Uganda.

The campaign messaging has been designed as a combination of text, animation and video. There are prompting questions for engagement and the data collected from the responses will be packaged after the activation and used in the dissemination period which will commence towards the end of 2020.

We look forward to launching the campaign and look forward to your engagement on social media and in the webinar with our esteemed guests Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur – The Right to Health; Prof Sheila Tlou, Co-Chairperson of Global HIV Prevention Coalition and former Minister of Health, Botswana; and Dr. Julitta Onabanjo, Regional Director, UNFPA ESARO.

FB: fb.me/HSRCSchoolsOut

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQjCwPW6xtvZ-Ym8AtrIjeA?disable_polymer=true

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HSRCSchoolsOut

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hsrc_schoolsout/