Women empowerment Bangladesh

The KAISHAR Program is being implemented in Nasirnagar to improve adolescent health behaviors. The program will continue to ensure adolescents’ access to reproductive and sexual health information including HIV/AIDS through linking them with existing government, NGO and other community-based services. The ARSH program uses the strategy of peer education to enhance sexual health and awareness among adolescents. In FY06, the ARSH program achieved the following:

•880 male and female adolescents were oriented as peer educators and they facilitated 28,958 peer education sessions on ARSH for 8,800 male and female adolescents in the community

• 17,022 parents, in-laws and husbands received ARSH related information through 1,176 workshops

• 20,872 adolescents practiced organization and communication skills through 76 get-togethers and Adult-Adolescent Dialogues
• Information regarding services was provided to 5,441 adolescents through health education sessions at satellite clinics and counseling sessions at health facilities

• TT Vaccinations were given to 3,446 female adolescent girls by government health service providers
ARSH Circle at a community based information center in Bangladesh; Photograph by Bangladesh Field Staff

• 200 Health Service Providers and Village Health Practitioners received training on adolescent-friendly health services.

Strengthening Girls’ Voices
In FY07, with support from the Nike Foundation, a unique cross-sectoral project for adolescent girls, named Kishoree Kontha will be implemented in three sub-districts of Barisal division. This program will strive to improve the well-being of rural adolescent girls by improving their knowledge, life and livelihood skills with the goal of poverty reduction. The experiences and
lessons learned from KAISHAR program implementation will continue to be applied to this girls empowerment project.

Innovation
The start of the Nike-funded program has provided a unique opportunity to partner with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to test and determine program components that can have the greatest impact on adolescent girls’ empowerment. This will add to the evidence base for effective multi-sector programming to reach adolescent girls.