Ogun State Government has described investment in the youth as investing in the future, hence the reason it places high premium on their wellbeing especially in the area of sexual and reproductive health.
The Executive Secretary, Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Elijah Ogunsola made this known during the Workplan Meeting of the Naija Girls A360 Amplified Project in collaboration with the Society for Family Health(SFH) in Abeokuta, saying the Board was set to replicate the success of past project in other Local Government Areas of the state.
Ogunsola noted that the main thrust of the collaboration was to ensure that every girl child in the state take ownership of their, mental, sexual and reproductive health, adding that the project would also empower them make informed key life decisions.
” The A360 Amplified Project is in collaboration with the SFH and it is an 80 percent health project looking after the reproductive health needs, issues and concerns of the girl child. We want to ensure they take ownership of their overall mental, financial and health needs. They will be empowered so that they will not be taken advantage of at any point in time” Ogunsola said.
He added that the Naija Girls A360 Amplified Project would empower girls in Negotiation and other life skills such as bead making, baking, production of household consumables as well as hairdressing, revealing that they would also be trained in Information Communication Technology, to enable them engage in e- marketing of their products, thereby contributing to the economy of their communities and the state at large.
Earlier, the Project Director, Naija Girls A360 Amplified, Society for Family Health, Ms Oluwatoyin Ogbondemininu said that the goal of the project was to develop a road map on how past A360 could be incorporated into the State’s Adolescents Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy, noting that it would run for a period of five years between 2020 through 2025.
Ogbondemininu emphasised that it was a build up on the success recorded in the past and would be used to document learning that could be used at the national level and globally, adding that there are checklists put in place at different stages of evaluation to ensure desired outcomes.
It would be recalled that first phase of the Naija Girls A360 project in the state was implemented in 2017 and ended in September, 2020