UNESCO- Strengthening HIV prevention amongst young people through CSE 2012-17

UNESCO has applied for funds to support an extention of the 'Strengthening HIV prevention amongst young people through promoting comprehensive sexuality education in Eastern and Southern Africa Project' , to increase the implementation period to 12 months from 1 January 2016 to 31 December, 2016. The purpose of the project is to increase children and young people's knowledge on sexual and reproductive health and rights through access to high quality comprehensive sexuality education that is gender transformative, evidence informed and age and culturally appropriate. UNESCO has requested for a total amount of MSEK15. The proposal is to support the expansion and strengthening of activities that have been undertaken from 2012 to 2015. The activities are expected to bring an important information and knowledge gap that is essential for young people to address the sexual and reproductive health needs as well as make important decisions regarding their sexuality. The project which has been implemented since 2012 was designed to offer support to 10 countries in total to carry out specific activities according to each country's needs. Two countries were added to the project during 2015. The conceptual framework of the project is such that it operates on five (5) key dimensions of project implementation, which are expected to lead to the achievement of the overall project objective which is 'increasing children and young people's knowledge on sexual and reproductive health and rights through access to high quality CSE that is gender transformative, evidence informed and age appropriate’. The project has thus far been working towards securing high level political support for the provision of CSE in the education sector and mostly through activities of the ESA commitment; to strengthen policies and systems for the delivery of CSE at school level by building the capacity of the stakeholders in the education sector to plan, manage and monitor CSE programmes adequately; mainstreaming CSE in curricula; increasing capacity of the teachers within the education sector to deliver CSE programmes confidently; and engaging communities through community engagement programmes. During the extension period, UNESCO has proposed focusing only on four of the five objectives of the project, thereby leaving out objective three which was focusing on curricula development which most countries have been able to progress well with. UNESCO will during this extension period also carry out a project evaluation which had not been planned for in the earlier project period. This will provide an opportunity to make an assessment of the achievements of the project and to position this work in other regional interventions on SRHR. The project will continue to work in all the countries as follows: Focus countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Nambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Networking countries: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.