A Sexual and Reproductive Health Success Story
Youth Leading Youth: SAYWHAT Reclaiming Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for Young People in Zimbabwe’s Tertiary Institutions
This document is useful for anyone interested in learning more about the SAYWHAT programme, and important for organisations looking to replicate the model and its approaches, especially as it outlines the ‘how and what’ that makes SAYWHAT’s SRHR Programme a success story.
Documenting Developmental Success Stories – The SAfAIDS Model SAfAIDS has been documenting best/good practices and success stories in development work, particularly HIV, gender, culture and SRH-related programmes and policies across the SADC region for over five years. During this period, SAfAIDS has established standard criteria for identification of success story, and a standard methodology for documentation. The organisation has gained expertise in the targeted dissemination and sharing of documented good practices and success stories that have proven effective and valuable to support programmes in scale-up and replication of effective programmes, and in advocacy for resource mobilisation HIV, gender, culture and SRH. The systematic approach used for documenting the SAYWHAT Youth SRHR Programme as a success story has been drawn from SAfAIDS’ experiences, as well as those of other organisations such as USAID/Africare and DFID ).
Lessons Learned: The SAYWHAT initiative has generated invaluable lessons that can be used to improve future youth-targeted SRHR and HIV programmes.
- Mentoring Youth Organisations for Success
Although SAYWHAT is truly a youth-initiated and youth-led initiative, the organisation’s survival as a youth organisation lies in the nurturing and mentoring that the founders received through the auspices of Community Working Group on Health (CWGH). Transforming youth initiatives into sustainable organisations requires a mentor with youth interests at heart and with the capacity to provide mentorship that is specifically focused on organisational development.
- Generating Capacity for Youth to Lead in Their Own Interventions
Generating the capacity of young people to respond to their own challenges is more empowering than providing services to young people. Capacity development should target both beneficiaries and youth leaders driving the intervention in order to respond effectively to the dynamism of young people’s needs.
- Integration of Youth Initiatives into Existing Interventions
At project start-up, it is important for organisations to identify opportunities for integrating their projects and interventions into existing services provided in the targeted constituency. This strategy was adopted due to a realisation that introducing parallel programmes for students would prove difficult given their schedules and competing interests. This strategy also helps to provide an existing firm foundation from which to launch interventions, thereby maximising the impact of the intervention within a relatively short period of time. SAYWHAT designed interventions to integrate with and enhance services and products, for example, health care, entertainment, student orientation, student union activities and curriculum which were already provided to students at their tertiary institutions, achieving some impact.
- Addressing Underlying Causes of Youth Vulnerabilities
Interrogate the particular national or community challenges and identify the real underlying causes of vulnerability as a first step to addressing them through the implementation of targeted interventions. Whilst accommodation and transport presented themselves as key challenges faced by young people working with SAYWHAT, there was a realisation that the challenges went beyond what could be seen on the surface. The real challenges, which increased young people to vulnerability to HIV and STIs for instance, were inadequate information and skills to support youth to understand, access and enjoy their sexual and reproductive rights.
- Creating Networks for Cost Effectiveness and Sustainability
Early on in the project, identify and mentor beneficiaries who will eventually become part of the project implementing machinery, either as paid staff or volunteers. This is both cost-effective and sustainable as it empowers target groups, in this case young people, to manage the project, building capacity, encouraging ownership of the project and minimising operating costs. The use of information communication technology (computers, mobile phones and sms) has proved a cost-cutting, yet highly effective measure for SAYWHAT because project leaders are able to report progress and challenges in a timely and efficient manner without SAYWHAT diverting funds from programmes to logistics to physically visit each college.
- Integration of HIV into SRHR to Address Underlying Causes of Youth Vulnerability
HIV may manifest itself as an obvious cause for youth vulnerability, but continued analysis of the challenges faced by youth enabled SAYWHAT to identify limited SRHR knowledge as another cause of vulnerability. By linking the two, SAYWHAT was able to adequately address the underlying causes of youth vulnerability.