ARROW's Right Here Right Now (RHRN) Changemakers initiative launched in 2020, has trained over 150 youth leaders from countries including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, during the last two years. Over 40 innovative projects have been supported through mentorship and seed funding. Young people identified the problems in their local context and designed innovative solutions on a range of issues, including comprehensive sexuality education, sexual and gender-based violence, and LGBTIQAP+ rights of young people.
These youth changemakers are coming together at the Asia Youth Festival on Innovation for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), that is being held during 19-21 September 2022 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to celebrate their work in their communities and share the lessons learnt. The youth festival aims to help youth changemakers build their capacities on social entrepreneurship and SRHR through training, mentorship, pilots and scale-up initiatives. Sai Jyothirmai Racherla, Deputy Executive Director of ARROW, said to CNS (Citizen News Service) that the Asia Youth Festival aims to foster a mindset of innovation and creative problem-solving among young people. "We hope to nurture building the youth movement for sustainable development in the Asia region," she says.
Women and Earth initiative
The impact of climate change on sexual and reproductive health is increasingly becoming an area of interest for the youth. As communities grapple with the increased severity and frequency of floods and cyclones, there is a growing concern of its adverse impacts on women and girls. ARROW also implements the Women and Earth (WORTH) Initiative focused on climate change and SRHR, that is helping the youth develop new solutions to issues arising from interlinkages between gender equality and SRHR with environmental sustainability and climate change adaptation. Under this initiative young leaders from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and the Philippines have been supported to attend capacity building labs and develop and implement innovative ideas on SRHR and climate change.
The Asia Youth Festival celebrates the achievements of these changemakers and social change innovators and provides them an opportunity to share and learn from each other.
Sabir Ali, from Rural Development Foundation, Pakistan, works in the Sindh province which is prone to floods. It has also been impacted in the recent floods the country is facing. Sabir notes that there is greater risk of gender-based violence and sexual abuse in relief camps. As food relief and disaster relief become priority, access to family planning services get disrupted, he says. Sabir's work focuses on helping women and girls engage with policy making. Through safe spaces and dialogue women and girls are able to articulate their problems. These could be as simple as lack of menstrual products during a disaster or as complex as increased sexual abuse and violence.
The Asia Pacific region hosts over 60% of the world's young population. This translates into more than 750 million young women and men aged 15 to 24 years. Many adolescents and young people in the region continue to transition to adulthood with inadequate information on matters of sexual and reproductive health and rights. According to a UNFPA report on sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in the Asia Pacific, 1 in 3 women aged 15-24 do not have their demand for family planning satisfied by modern methods; less than 1 in 4 sexually active unmarried adolescents are using a modern method of contraception. There are an estimated 3.6 million unsafe abortions every year among women aged 15-24 years. Maternal disorders are the leading cause of death of girls aged 15-19 years in the Pacific, and the second leading cause of death in South Asia.
Tanya Khera, 29, co-founder of the Samanta Foundation works in Uttarakhand, India, among forest dwellers. She says that issues and challenges peculiar to these communities include early marriage, adolescent pregnancies, and miscarriages. To address the challenge of lack of awareness on issues such as menstrual hygiene management, spacing of pregnancies, as well as resources and services available to them, Tanya has set up a chatbot on sexual health issues. The chatbot also refers users to the government's app for tele-counselling or to the closest health facility. Users also have an option to call a trained young woman from the community for more advice.
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