Reducing Adolescent Pregnancy (RAP) in the Era of COVID-19

What’s your program?

WCI and Winam Green Ventures recently collaborated to implement our “Reducing Adolescent Pregnancy (RAP) in the Era of COVID-19” pilot program in Kisumu, Kenya. We engaged 60 adolescent girls over the course of four weeks in socially-distant gatherings to provide them with critical resources, information, and support to make healthy decisions for their futures. Workshops discussed COVID-19 and PPE, the female reproductive system and menstruation, sex and healthy relationships, pregnancy, and STDS such as HIV. Our goal in this project is to prevent teenage girls from becoming pregnant, acquiring HIV, and acquiring COVID-19 in order to ensure that more girls return to school after this pandemic. We are now working to expand the program to reach more girls in Kenya and abroad.

Tell us about WCI and Winam Green Ventures

Women’s Campaign International (WCI) was created in 1998 after our founder, Marjorie Margolies, directed the U.S. delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. She founded WCI as a way to put the conference’s commitments into action, and since then we have worked in around 45 countries around the world to develop women’s leadership skills. Our programs have focused on our core themes of conflict transformation, community engagement, and economic sustainability, and have made an incredible impact over the past 23 years. Since 2010, we have also been working with youth here in Philadelphia (our home city) through our Girls Advocacy and Leadership Series (GALS). In 2018, we brought our GALS program to Kenya and met Prescilla. She led our GALS program there in 2019 and we have continued to work together ever since.

What Inspired you to start this program?

We stayed in touch since Prescilla ran WCI’s GALS program in Kenya in 2019. When COVID-19 resulted in school closures in March 2020, Prescilla reached out to Brynn to talk about how that was affecting girls’ health. Without school, girls have been cut off from teachers who can sound the alarm in suspected cases of abuse at home, and students have been left idle and often unchaperoned by busy parents, not to mention that curfews also have trapped girls in homes with predatory family members and neighbours. An increase in teen pregnancy will be—and already is—a significant outcome of this pandemic that, as of the summer, had not yet been widely acknowledged by the international community. Underpinning any COVID-19-related rise in teen pregnancies are other significant challenges, including insufficient funding for reproductive health services and a lack of comprehensive sex education in schools—which have contributed to Kenya’s alarming numbers. We knew that we had the creativity, experience, and the means to create an intervention, which is how we came up with RAP: a quick, effective way to get information and resources to girls to help them learn more about their bodies, consent, and how to prevent pregnancy and disease.

What have some of your challenges been?

Prescilla: some of the challenges I experienced  during the pilot program includes the following

·         Water is very essential during training hence we should always budget for it, but this time we forgot to. Some of the participants could not be in the training without water so I ended up buying some of them water.

·         Mondays were commencement days and preparing the participants took a lot of time and mostly Mondays we finished at around 3pm, which was much later than we had anticipated.

Brynn: Some of the challenges that we knew we would have to deal with from then start include the risk of COVID-19 in addition to local stigmas, misinformation, and social norms around pregnancy, sex, early marriage, and STDs. To prevent the spread of COVID-19 at RAP gatherings, we ensured that all gatherings were socially distant, with participants at least six feet apart from each other, in a facility with open windows to ensure regular air flow. Additionally, we provided each participant with sufficient PPE. To begin addressing misinformation and stigmas, we asked participants about what they have been hearing and talk through what is or is not true. Prescilla always made time to talk one-on-one with participants at the end of each day to make sure that they understood these issues accurately before going home and passing on this information to others. We had an incredible opportunity to be a part of changing the very challenges we were facing—misinformation and the spread of COVID-19.

What have been your best resources?

Prescilla: Some of the best practice of RAP included the following:

1.       There were regular checkups by WCI and this rejuvenated me as I could share and get your views

2.       After training session personal questions were good since it helped to maintain the participants privacy

3.       Me giving the last session everyday for the participants helped them build their effective communication skills and also it helped me to know whether the objective of that day’s training have been achieved

4.       Ice breaking sessions were very important as it helped to make the training very interesting

5.       Giving every participant chances o express how they feel was very awesome way to start the trainings

Brynn: Prescilla! I never could have put together an effective program without her coming to me with this issue and providing local insight all along the way. She was invaluable to the creation of this program and its success.

Best Advice for your younger peers?

Prescilla: To the teenagers my advice to them is that, for them to achieve their dreams they should take initiative and work towards them hence they should do the following: use their free time to do their hobbies, associate with like-minded peers , always try to look at their role models, work harder in schools, help in house chores where possible and engage in community activities like clean up.

Brynn: I agree with Prescilla. Make an effort to get to know people who share the same values and interests as you, and learn about different ways you can make a difference in your community. Relationship building is very important, and to do that I believe you need to be your authentic self. People see and appreciate authenticity—even when your ideas may differ from your peers—and that will lead to trust, opportunities, and mutual support. Foster authentic relationships even if you have no clear end goal in mind. Prescilla and I kept in touch after the close of our last program, and this new opportunity arose out of that.