Project Title: “I care, I enjoy, I decide”
Project Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Project duration: January – December 2011
Total Project Cost in USA $: 11, 980 USD
Project Background/Need statement/Problem Analysis:
This project will be implemented in marginalized areas of Mexico City which are the less developed areas in the city, with high rates of poverty, that lack of basic public services such as electricity, water and sewage, with inadequate housing, low incomes and no access to education. Our target groups are adolescent women (between 14 and 19 years) that live in these areas.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents in Mexico is a key issue in the young people’s human rights debate. However, young women in Mexico are the main target of violence, femicides and human rights violations including sexual and reproductive rights. This is exacerbated by poverty which prevents these women from accessing quality education and health services, and consequently having a good sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Some of the consequences associated to a poor SRH are: unsafe abortion practices and maternal death in adolescents, teenage pregnancy/adolescent parenthood, health problems during and after pregnancy for the mother and the baby, school dropout or poor school performance when teen pregnancies occur, high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and high risk of HIV infection.
Nevertheless, governments have failed to provide comprehensive sexuality education to adolescents by yielding to pressure from conservative groups or because there are not enough resources allocated to tackle this problem. Moreover, some policies implemented by local governments that criminalize abortion, leads thousands of young women to undergo illegal abortions endangering their health and their life.
Other youth-led organizations and governmental departments in charge of protecting women’s rights, focus on developing advocacy campaigns and raising awareness about this issue. However, transforming policies could be a long process so it is also important to direct our efforts in developing prevention programs to provide timely information about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), as well as the necessary tools that will enable teenage girls to exercise those rights.
Given this situation, this project attempts to bridge the gap between what disadvantaged adolescent women in Mexico actually know about their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and what they need to know in order to exercise their sexuality in a responsible and satisfying way while having the freedom to plan when and how often to have children. It will also incorporate the gender equality perspective as a key factor to improve the sexual and reproductive health of teenage girls.
Baseline Project Information:
The background of this project is based upon the information that has been gathered from surveys and studies carried out by governmental institutions such as the Mexican Youth Institute, and from statistics provided by other non-profit organizations or international agencies. This information has served as a reference point which led to the major assumptions and problem statement of this project.
However, to verify whether this information is accurate or not, and to determine to what extent have the objectives of this project been achieved, a diagnostic evaluation will be carried out before implementation. A questionnaire will be developed and applied to the beneficiaries before the beginning of the workshop to assess the type and amount of knowledge they possess regarding sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality. This will form our baseline information. Then we will compare this information with the results of a second questionnaire that will be applied immediately after the workshop and during the follow-up stage.
Project Summary/Description:
“I care, I enjoy, I decide” is a project that seeks to provide comprehensive education about sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality to 100 teenage girls that live in marginalized areas of Mexico City. This project will be implemented in 2011 and will be carried out by a group of young people interested in promoting and defending the rights of young women. To achieve this, a 20 hour workshop will be developed and facilitated to the beneficiaries. Using different evaluation tools and techniques, the outcomes and impact of this project will be assessed, and a follow-up will be conducted three months after implementation.
Project Goal/Aim:
The project aim is to provide comprehensive education on sexual and reproductive health and rights to 100 teenage girls of marginalized in Mexico City, introducing gender equality as a key factor.
This project expects to contribute to 3 of the 8 development goals.
1) Maternal health – There are high rates of maternal mortality among adolescent women due to unsafe abortion practices or problems during and after pregnancy. By providing timely and comprehensive education about SRHR, we expect to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancies and therefore reduce maternal deaths among these women.
2) Combat HIV/AIDS – According to the World Aids Campaign, the need to address both SRHR and HIV together is key to ensuring continued and sustainable progress in these areas. Providing comprehensive sexuality education and information about sexually transmitted infections (including HIV) is part of the sexual and reproductive health services. Therefore, this project expects to contribute to reduce the rate of new HIV infections among this population.
3) Gender equality – Since this project aims to introduce gender equality as a key factor to improve adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health, it also expects to contribute to the achievement of this goal.
Project Objectives:
1) Develop and facilitate a 20 hour workshop to 100 marginalized teenage girls in Mexico City to provide them comprehensive education on sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equity from April till June, 2011.
2) Develop a pre and post evaluation instrument that will be applied before and after the workshop, respectively, to assess the impact of the project. A follow-up will be carried out after three months, from October till December 2011.
3) Increase by 70% the beneficiaries' knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, rights, and gender equality.
4) Increase by 70% the use of contraceptive methods among the beneficiaries of the project.
Project Activities:
1) Induction process – The people recruited to participate in this project will be trained to provide them the necessary information about the organization and the tools to implement the project. This will be done by the Gender Program Director and the Project Manager in December 2010. First we will introduce them to the organization and will explain its mission, vision and objectives. Then, the project will be presented (aim, objectives, activities, expected outcomes, responsibilities, etc.).
2) Handbook – This project’s aim will be achieved by facilitating a workshop to the beneficiaries. A young man or women will be hired to create a handbook that will serve as a guide for the facilitators of this workshop. This task will be carried out from January till March 2011.
3) Booklet – The person in charge of the handbook will also be asked to develop a booklet with youth friendly information about the topics that will be addressed during the workshop. This booklet will be delivered to the beneficiaries so that they can access and share this information whenever they need. This will be done from January till March 2011.
4) Evaluation instrument – The responsible of evaluation will be charge of developing an assessment tool to evaluate the outcomes of the project. The period to carry out this task will be from January till March 2011. He or she will develop a questionnaire to gather the baseline information. This questionnaire will be applied to the beneficiaries before the beginning of the workshop. Then, at the end of the workshop, a second questionnaire will be applied and some semi-structured interviews and focus groups will be conducted. This information will be analyzed by the evaluation team.
5) Workshop – From April till June 2011, 2 young women (between 20 and 25 years old) will facilitate a 20 hour workshop to provide comprehensive education on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and gender equality to 100 marginalized teenage girls of Mexico City. These workshops will be facilitated in groups of 15 or maximum 20 adolescents.
6) Follow-up - During the follow up stage (October – December 2011) a third questionnaire will be used to assess if there were significant and perdurable changes in these girls lives. This will be done by the facilitators. Then the responsible of evaluation, some volunteers and the project manager will conduct more semi-structured interviews and focus groups to gather qualitative information that complements the quantitative data.
Description of Project Beneficiaries:
The beneficiaries of this project will be adolescent women (between 14 and 19 years old) that live in marginalized areas of Mexico City, usually with an educational backwardness and probably living with one or more children, although not married.
Target Community input: Community will contribute to this project by providing an adequate working space to facilitate the workshops.
Project Timeline/Work Plan:
Community participation and collaboration:
Target community has been involved in shaping this project because an in-depth research about its situation and main needs has been conducted to develop the objectives and activities. Besides, since Espolea is an organization that seeks to empower and involve young people in projects and initiatives to defend human rights from a youth perspective, working closely with these populations in fundamental to achieve our goals, especially for the Gender Program.
The community’s role is fundamental since they will provide the necessary information to evaluate the outcomes and impact of this project. Moreover, they are expected to become key stakeholders that will continue to promote and defend the rights of adolescent women within the community to guarantee their fully and healthy development.
The final project plan will be presented to key strategic partners (Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Mexico) and other government agencies (National Institute of Women) to ask them to collaborate with us in implementing the project, by giving feedback on the content and the way information will be presented, sharing their experience and by providing other useful materials to the beneficiaries (apart from the booklet that we will deliver).
Innovation:
It is common that many workshops interested in providing comprehensive sexuality education to young people are facilitated by adults that have experience in this topic, but not necessarily know how to fully engage them.
That is why this project is based on peer education, as the facilitators of the workshop will not have more than 25 years. Moreover, we will use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to increase participants’ interest and teach them how to use them to access information. Finally, although our main focus will be to provide education on sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality, we will also provide the beneficiaries some advocacy tools to involve them in the promotion and defense of these rights within their community.
Project Outcomes:
One of the project’s objectives is to increase by 70% the beneficiaries’ knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality. Therefore we expect this to be one of the immediate outcomes of the project.
We also expect to have increased awareness among community members and the beneficiaries themselves about the importance of addressing these topics and working towards improving adolescent women’s sexual and reproductive health.
As we will assess if the participants are sexually active, and whether or not they use contraceptive methods before the beginning of the workshop, we look forward to increase by 70% the use of these methods among the beneficiaries.
Project Sustainability:
The final report that will be presented to the funder, partners and the community expects to set the ground work for advocacy efforts in Mexico, regarding young women’s rights as it will it will help to identify the current needs of this population and make further recommendations. Then, the strategy may be replicated in similar contexts all around Mexico and in other countries in Latin America.
To the extent in which the final document presents concrete experiences, it will also evidence the vacuum of particular information and knowledge regarding sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality. This will assure a continuation of the efforts directed to provide comprehensive education on these topics and hopefully improve young women’s sexual and reproductive health.
Partnership/Stakeholders:
To involve other people in a particular project it is important to explain what will be the benefits for both the community and the interested parties.
By sharing the rationale of this project, its objectives and expected outcomes to the local authorities, we will ask them to participate as key stakeholders. The value of involving the local government in our project is that we can get many facilities for its implementation or we could access the target community more easily. We might also be able to negotiate with them and include the beneficiaries in other government programs to provide them scholarships that will enable them to continue their studies and consequently have more opportunities in the future.
Other non-profit organizations like the Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights will be involved by inviting them to become strategic partners. This will add value to the project because they will have the opportunity to share their experience and contact us with potential funders.
Communication and Sharing:
The report will be presented to the funder, partners and community, and they will be asked to disseminate the information gathered before, during and after the implementation, as well as the outcomes of this project. We will also look for national and international forums to present our work and share our experiences. In this way, we hope to reach as many people as possible to prevent duplication of efforts. Social networks such as facebook, twitter and youtube will also be used to spread this information.
Note: The report will be presented as PDF document, but some hard copies will be printed out.
Project management Structure:
• Project manager will: monitor the team; contact strategic partners and stakeholders; recruit volunteers, and write partial and final reports.
• Responsible of content will: develop the facilitators’ handbook and the booklet that will be delivered to the beneficiaries.
• Responsible of evaluation will: develop the assessment tools to evaluate the outcomes (questionnaires, semi-structured interviews); analyze the information provided by the beneficiaries and other stakeholders, present a report about the results, and lead the volunteers that will help in this task.
• Facilitators (2) will: facilitate the workshop, apply the pre and post evaluation instruments, and participate in the follow-up stage.
• Volunteers will be supporting and helping other team members in their activities.
Transparency and accountability will be ensured by asking every team member to make weekly reports about their activities. Facilitators will also be asked to write a binnacle of each workshop session. Before implementing the project, we will explain what percentage of the total budget is allocated to specific activities and to account for the expenses made, receipts and invoices need to be presented.
Mobilizing Support:
The Gender Program Director and I will start contacting other organizations to establish strategic partnerships for the implementation of this project. Next weekend, the National Feminist Encounter will take place in Zacatecas, Mexico. I will attend this event and I think this will be a great opportunity to start mobilizing local support.
To convince others to work with us, I need to be able to negotiate and match different agendas. Various organizations have similar objectives, although different methodologies and target groups. Therefore, it is important to explain how the outcomes and information gathered during this project will benefit both organizations. We can also offer some training in exchange for their support in this project.
Being an agent of change, involves much more than just desiring to become one. A person needs to feel empowered and have the initiative to put ideas into action. Giving other people the opportunity to participate in different events and projects where they can test their abilities or share their knowledge, is important to include them in this process. This becomes particularly important in the case of beneficiaries since we expect them to become strategic actors and not only passive individuals that receive information. That is why during the workshops we will also provide advocacy tools to participants so that they can become part of a movement, and future advocators of young people’s rights.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
Objective1: 100 teenage girls from marginalized areas in Mexico City attended a workshop on sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality. Therefore, they increased their knowledge about these topics.
Indicators of achievement:
• Number of teenage girls who successfully completed the workshop
• Number of beneficiaries who increased their knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality.
Means of verification:
• An attendance list will be used to register the number of girls that attended each session. This will help us determine how many teenagers started the workshop and how many completed it. This information will be obtained by the facilitators.
• A questionnaire will be applied to the girls that successfully completed the workshop to assess whether or not they increased their knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality. These results will be compared with the baseline information obtained before the beginning of the workshop. Facilitators will be in charge of collecting this information (applying the questionnaires). Afterwards, responsible of evaluation will analyze it and will present his/her report.
• Photographs and videos will be used to document the implementation. This will be done by throughout the workshop and this material will be collected from the facilitators and some volunteers.
• Statements and experiences of the beneficiaries and other stakeholders will be gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted by the responsible of evaluation, the project manager and some volunteers to determine which factors influenced beneficiaries’ learning. This will be done immediately after the workshop and during the follow-up stage.
Objective2: 100 teenage girls that reported being sexually active before the beginning of the project and attended the workshop increased the use of contraceptive methods.
Indicators of achievement:
• Number of teenage girls who successfully completed the workshop
• Number of girls who reported being sexually active and increased the use of contraceptive methods
Means of verification:
• An attendance list will be used to register the number of girls that attended each session. This will help us determine how many teenagers started the workshop and how many completed it. This information will be obtained by the facilitators.
• During the follow-up stage (3 months after the end of the workshop) a questionnaire will be applied to the girls that successfully completed the workshop to determine if those who reported being sexually active increased their use of contraceptive methods. Facilitators will be in charge of collecting this information (applying the questionnaires). Afterwards, responsible of evaluation will analyze it and will present his/her report.
• Statements and experiences of the beneficiaries and other stakeholders will be gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted by the responsible of evaluation, the project manager and some volunteers to determine which factors influenced beneficiaries’ learning. This will be done immediately after the workshop and during the follow-up stage.
Challenges:
Community’s response - Even though many people acknowledges the importance of improving the sexual and reproductive health of adolescent women, this does not necessarily mean that they will be comfortable with the information that will be provided because there are still many taboos regarding adolescents’ sexuality. Therefore, working together with parents and teachers, and involving them in the process is fundamental to achieve our objectives. We can start by explaining the importance of the information provided and sharing the rationale of this particular project (show statistics, reports of other organizations, present stories of success, etc.). However, it is also important to listen to them, identify their needs and try meeting those needs, as far as possible.
Time – Since this is a 20 hour workshop, so we might have problems with attendance beneficiaries are unable to go all the sessions. To overcome this situation we will try to adapt to the school or community centre schedules to ensure the beneficiaries will complete the workshop. For example, the workshop can be facilitated in one week (4 hours per day) or 4 weekends (5 hours every Saturday) according to the needs of the community.
My biggest challenge as a new project manager would be to carry out a successful project. I understand that this depends on many factors such as building a good working team, carefully planning the project, and ensure accountability. However, I have the information and resources that will help me to fulfill this task. Besides, I have received support, advice and training from other young leaders around the world. So I feel confident that I will be able to face every challenge and accomplish my goals.
Financial Management Principles:
Regarding our financial management principles, our organization has an accountant who is in charge of managing the finances of the organization and reporting to the Ministry of Finance. We also have a bank account where funder can make the deposit and a checkbook to withdraw money from the bank. However, only the Director of the Gender Program and I are allowed to sign these checks. Besides, team members will be asked to provide receipts/invoices of their expenses to ensure accountability.
To involve the team in the management system, every member will participate in creating the ground rules and establishing the principles that will guide our project. Moreover, everybody will receive all the necessary information and tools to carry out their tasks. To ensure an effective communication everyone needs to know who reports to whom, to avoid cross information. By delegating responsibilities according to the skills and profile of each member, I will manage my resources in a just and participatory manner. However, although everyone has a specific task to carry out, teamwork is essential since all of us will be pursuing the same objectives.
Fundraising:
We applied for the Staying Alive Foundation grant, but we have to wait to see if we were considered for the second phase. If this does not work, we will look for other organizations interested in financing this project. If we do not get the total funding from one organization, we can divide the activities and look for more than one granter (one for each activity that needs to be carried out). We also plan to contact the Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Mexico to help in this task.
To yield project costs, spending priorities will be established and we will make sure we get the best prices for all the material resources we will use.
Budget:
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