Break Free! – Young people advocate for their sexual and reproductive health and rights
- Countries
- Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, and Zambia.
- Status
- Ongoing
- Duration
- 2021-2025
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are critical to the healthy development of young people, but many young people must find their way with inaccurate information, poor access to health services, and harmful gender norms that prevent girls from having a say in decisions that affect them. In many African countries, young girls face the challenges of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and female genital mutilation/cutting, all of which influence their health, education, employment, and empowerment.
The Break Free! programme aims to strengthen young people’s SRHR and promote gender equality in nine African countries so that young people can make informed decisions about their future.
Break Free! Objectives:
- Strengthen the SRHR of young people by providing them with accurate information and enabling access to appropriate health care services
- Promote better decision-making and effective implementation of laws and policies that address the needs of young people
- Ensure proper and safe education for girls at risk of child marriage and teenage pregnancy.
Working together with African Partners and Youth
The programme is implemented by Plan International and the African organizations SRHR Africa Trust and Forum for African Women Educationalists in strategic partnership with the funder, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Together with Rosaria Memorial Trust, KIT Institute is one of the technical partners of this consortium.
KIT Institute works together with the consortium and in-country experts to conduct research about young people’s SRHR. This involves desk studies, qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods studies, most of which involve young people during different parts of the research. We conduct studies to understand young people’s SRHR needs, access to education and SRHR information, and their role in advocacy, and the findings are used for lobby and advocacy towards governments and donors. KIT Institute also supports the programme’s Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (PMEL); KIT Institute has facilitated the midterm review in 2023 and played a key role in facilitating the Break Free! global learning event in 2025.
Our Activities
The Break Free! programme is implemented in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, and Zambia.
2021
- Desk review on Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – French
- Executive Summary – Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – English
- Understanding the nature of public and political polemics on comprehensive sexuality education in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia (internal only)
2022
- Evaluation of the YouthWyze platform, a digital platform that connects young people, provides SRHR information and links young people to SRH services in Malawi and Zambia
- Unravelling the chain of youth-led advocacy for SRHR – a study in three Break Free! countries about young people’s involvement in advocacy and what we can learn from it:
- Responsiveness of local laws to adolescents’ SRHR needs in Malawi and Sudan:
- Publication: Community bylaws concerning sexual and reproductive health and rights in Traditional Authority Chiwalo, Machinga district, southern Malawi
- Publication: “Confusion between the religious and the social”: Influence of the pluralistic legal system on child marriage in Sudan. Available in English and Arabic.
2023
- Reviewing at mid-term the succeses, challenges, lessons learned and opportunities of the Break Free! programme
- Assessing how and to what extent a positive parenting training facilitates supportive and open communication between parents and their children on SRHR in Amhara region, Ethiopia
- Following youth over time: documenting experiences of youth advocates in Malawi and Niger
- Understanding the drivers of early marriage and teenage pregnancy in context: comparing eastern and western Zambia
2024
- Desk review: what are social norms and how to effectively set up social norm change interventions in SRHR programmes
- Exploring the intergenerational divide around adolescents’ and young people’s SRHR in Kenya
- Adaptive SRHR advocacy programming in disaster prone settings
2025
- Exploring intersecting challenges and opportunities between climate change, climate resilience and SRHR for young people in the (Southern) African context
Publications
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“Confusion between the religious and the social”
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Report
Sudan is the only country in North Africa that has not reformed the Personal Status Act for Muslims (also known as family law) which makes child marriage legal in Sudan. As of 2014, 38% of women (20-49 years) were married before the age of 18, and 12% of women (15-49 years) were married before the […]
- Year of publication
- November 2024
Downloads
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Youth advocacy on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Mozambique
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Report
The active participation of young individuals in the development and execution of programs and policies directed towards youth, particularly in matters of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), is key for the effectiveness of such initiatives. Meaningful involvement of youth in advocacy entails their engagement across all stages of advocacy, encompassing issue selection, strategy […]
- Year of publication
- 2024
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Learning from the positive parenting intervention by Break Free! in Ethiopia
The Break Free! (BF!) programme is a multi-country programme coordinated by Plan International, together with SRHR Africa Trust (SAT) and Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) as consortium partners and the Rozaria Memorial Trust and KIT Institute as technical partners. The aim of BF! is to enable young people to exercise their right to live […]
- Year of publication
- June 2024
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Drivers of Child Marriage in Eastern and Western provinces in Zambia and effective preventions
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Study
The Break Free! Consortium in Zambia is – through a mixture of interventions that include lobby and advocacy – working towards reducing child marriage in Eastern province in Zambia, a province with a high child marriage rate (45.4% of women aged 20-24 were married by the age of 18 in 2018). The Break Free! partners, […]
- Year of publication
- 2023
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Community bylaws concerning sexual and reproductive health and rights in Traditional Authority Chiwalo, Machinga district, southern Malawi
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Study
Community bylaws are commonly accepted mechanisms to influence behaviour change to achieve better health and development outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the uses, benefits, and potential downsides of community bylaws are largely unclear, especially regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of young people. The objective of this study was to determine the extent […]
- Year of publication
- 2023
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Youth-led Advocacy in Ethiopia
Young people on their successes, challenges, and motivations for youth-led SRHR advocacy in Ethiopia Youth-led advocacy as a concept is becoming increasingly familiar in development programmes, and in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) programmes specifically. Yet, research on this topic is rather scarce. Youth-led advocacy is usually understood as young people meaningfully involved […]
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Education and Empowerment over Marriage: Key drivers of Child Marriage in Eastern and Western Provinces in Zambia, and how they can be addressed
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Policy Brief
Child marriage, defined as a legal or informal union between two people before one or both of them turn 18 years old, is a practice that is proportionately affects girls and is linked to several unfavourable health, developmental, familial and social outcomes (1). Eastern and Southern Africa are home to over 50 million child brides, […]
- Year of publication
- 2023
Downloads
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Youth-led Advocacy in Mali
“Any action done without me is against me”. Modalities and conditions for the development of youth-led advocacy in Mali. An exploratory study on the modalities, success factors and constraints of youth-led advocacy. The meaningful involvement of young people in the development of programmes and policies that affect them is crucial for the success of programmes […]
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‘I Trust YouthWyze’
Learning from the implementation of the YouthWyze intervention in Malawi and Zambia YouthWyze is an intervention implemented under the Break Free! programme by SRHR Africa Trust (SAT). It aims to disseminate information and education around SRHR and establish linkages to SRH services for young people. This study areas included urban and rural areas as the […]
- Year of publication
- 2022
