AYA PROGRAM AREAS

Policy and Advocacy — In Uganda, AYA collaborates with key stakeholders, including religious and political authorities; the media; as well as those in the private and nongovernmental (NGO) sectors, to build trust in the importance and effectiveness of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) services. Using results from analyses, focus groups, and consultative sessions with those supportive of ASRH, AYA developed advocacy action plans and a relevant database. The AYA partners join forces to promote community awareness of ASRH issues and encourage increased use of existing youth-friendly services.

Behavior Change Communication — The education sector is a key partner in AYA's behavior change communication activities in Uganda. Administrators, teachers, guidance counselors, and Ministry of Education officials all contribute to AYA initiatives. The AYA partners receive direct input from young people about their needs and preferences, with the results incorporated into multimedia educational materials. Because only 15% of boys and 9% of girls in Uganda are enrolled in secondary school, AYA helps ensure that behavior change communication initiatives are balanced between in- and out-of-school youth. In-school students receive guidance and counseling materials, and their counselors receive skills training, while the project reaches out-of-school youth by setting up telephone hotlines and "entertainment-education" events. AYA will make sure behavior change campaigns are strategically timed to allow youth-friendly service sites and personnel to be ready for the resulting increase in demand.

Youth-Friendly Services — To build upon what exists, encourage cross-sector exchange, and streamline the training process, AYA coordinates joint youth-friendly services and quality assurance training to participants from the public, community-based, and NGO sectors. AYA integrates youth-friendly services into existing health care facilities and provides training in youth-friendly services and quality assurance to clinicians already skilled in providing reproductive health care. With funding and technical support from AYA, the Ugandan public health sector will build a national training team to train all public-sector service providers in the AYA intervention districts, as well as NGO and community-based health and extension workers. Once youth-friendly trainers and providers are in place in each district, the Ministry of Health will evaluate the outcome. In addition, NGOs will focus on reaching youth with better outreach and peer-provided services.

Institutional Capacity Building — AYA's approach to institutional capacity building focuses on the organization as a whole, with emphasis on improving specific management systems to achieve ASRH goals. To that end, AYA plans and implements all management capacity building interventions in concert with technical capacity building that the in-country partners receive on such topics as quality assurance and life-planning skills training. AYA will rely on the use of proven, field-tested management tools. All organizations selected to work with AYA in Uganda receive at least a "minimum package" of assistance to strengthen key managerial systems and institutional competencies. AYA also selects up to three organizations for in-depth capacity building activities in a specific management system that directly affects the institutions' ability to achieve ASRH outcomes, such as financial management, data collection, logistics management, or monitoring and evaluation.

Integration of ASRH into Livelihood Skills Development Programs — By providing ASRH information to youth involved in livelihood skills building programs, AYA will be able to have a great impact on many young people's lives, even with limited resources. Teaching youth how to be economically self sufficient and giving them vital ASRH information is critical to their leading long, productive, and healthy lives. Therefore, AYA carefully considers the best partnerships to make strong links between ASRH and livelihoods programs for adolescents, selecting a small number of partners working in this area to promote youth economic and health development.

Coordination and Dissemination — Currently, the national health management information system in Uganda lacks the ability to report on ASRH and track adolescent reproductive health statistics. Data on 10- to 14-year-old adolescents (AYA's focus audience) is not compiled separately, nor is it disaggregated by gender or by service received. This is also the case for most health service NGOs in Uganda. AYA will develop a simple database and reporting formats to collect ASRH statistics that can be easily integrated into the Ministry of Health's existing information system. AYA will work with its partners to increase the availability of ASRH service and programmatic data among the NGOs and other community-based organizations. It will also train in-country partner staff in the analysis and use of data to make programmatic decisions.

Youth Participation — As part of AYA, youth will manage existing social marketing networks. In Uganda, formal youth leaders are found in two groups: public sector youth council leaders and community youth group leaders. AYA has begun working with both groups to develop instruments and curricula for AYA program implementation, and is training youth leaders in ASRH issues, basic management, and leadership skills. Once trained, these youth leaders will provide advice to plan youth programming and allocate resources to ASRH in selected districts, sub-counties, and communities.

Sustainability — AYA believes that program sustainability is promoted through the participation of young people in leadership and management of youth-friendly services, as the primary beneficiaries of the services. An innovative matching grant program will be implemented through selected in-country partners to generate more funding for ASRH. The matching grant will encourage the institution to prioritize and allocate its own resources to ASRH, and consequently generate commitment to program issues.