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) and will facilitate the midterm review, which will take place in 2023.
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 (Complete)
- Executive Summary – Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – English (Complete)
- Understanding the nature of public and political polemics on comprehensive sexuality education in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia
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:
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 human sexuality education in Kenya
- Adaptive SRHR advocacy programming in disaster prone settings
