DSW Impact Assessment Consultancies in Kenya

DSW Impact Assessment Consultancies in Kenya

Terms of Reference for Impact Assessment for “Improving The Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Young Adolescents in Kenya (YAP)”

Terms of Reference for Impact Assessment

A young adolescent (YA) is a person aged between 10 and 14 years who is in the process of developing from a child into an adult. The YAs are in a period of dramatic intellectual, physical, psychological and social transformation.

This group represents a unique sub-group of adolescents undergoing rapid physical, cognitive and emotional changes related to puberty. During this period, YAs develop a greater awareness of their social sphere, increase their ability to think logically and concretely, feel greater self-consciousness, and tend to depend less on parents and more on friends.

It is also at this age that many YAs first engage in sexual activity. Many YAs lack knowledge about the physical changes happening in their bodies and need reassurance and support to deal with them.

However, their parents/guardians and other adults are usually unprepared to deal with such changes. In most African societies, topics on sexuality are considered a taboo and parents lack the skills or time to communicate effectively about them with their YAs.

In schools, teachers who should provide SRHR education are constrained in terms of skills and time, and typically focus on those subjects that are examinable. Consequently, YAs often do not have adequate support from their social surroundings or appropriate information, access to youth-friendly health services, protection, and decision-making power or the life skills needed to handle SRHR issues.

In order to address young adolescents’ Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights needs and situation, DSW with funding from Bayer HealthCare in 2013 started the Young Adolescents Project (YAP Kenya) aiming to increase SRHR knowledge, skills and access to services among young adolescents and to create a supportive school and community environment thus contributing to the improvement of health and well-being among young adolescents aged 10-14 years in Kilifi County.

It started with 9 schools and later up scaled to reach 29 primary schools between 2016-2018. This is a scale up of an initiative that started 2009 in Uganda in the districts of Masindi, Tororo, and Wakiso in 10 selected schools.

Through the overall objective the project aimed to contribute to reduce teenage pregnancies and discourage early marriages. The purpose is to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of young adolescents through improving and encouraging open communication between parents, teachers and adolescents as well as increasing level awareness of adolescents on SRHR.

Project Outcomes