The Institute of Health Management Pachod, a part of Ashish Gram Rachna Trust has been working to empower adolescent girls in Maharashtra since 1997. We are launching this campaign on Global Giving in an effort to fund an integrated intervention which will involve adolescent girls as well as their communities. In order to secure a permanent place on the Global Giving website, we need your support! Please contribute to our cause by visiting our page:
http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/projects/empowerment-of-6000-adolescent-girls-in-india/
You can help us by donating to the campaign, liking and sharing our page and sharing our updates.
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There are 113 million adolescent girls in India. About half will get married before the age of 18 and many will deliver their first child by the age of 17. Early marriage results in significantly increased morbidity and mortality among young mothers and their children. An integrated intervention can lead to the empowerment of girls by continuing formal education, delaying the age at marriage and first conception, and improving maternal and neonatal health. What is the challenge? Among married adolescent girls, 40.2% of all deaths are due to maternal morbidity. Mothers under the age of 15 are 5 times more likely to face maternal mortality and have higher neonatal and infant mortality rates than their 20-29 year old counterparts. Implementing an integrated intervention to change the social norms that perpetuate early marriage and childbirth is the challenge. How will this project help? Our goal is to empower adolescent girls through the following interventions:
1. We will empower unmarried adolescent girls through life skills education.
2. We will support the continued formal education of adolescent girls.
3. We will promote attitudinal change in unmarried and young married men, thereby demonstrating a measurable change in the prevalence of gender based violence and gender inequitable behaviors.
4. We will enact health interventions to protect young married women from the adverse consequences of early marriage, including early motherhood, sexual and domestic violence, and maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. What are we striving for? The project will empower 154,000 adolescent girls in a vast population of resulting in a measurable improvement in the knowledge, skills, self esteem and self efficacy, age at marriage and health of adolescent girls. Among married adolescent girls, we will reduce the prevalence of sexual and domestic violence, pre-term and low birth weight babies, and maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. We firmly believe that empowering adolescent girls is the key to improving the health of communities. We have also learned that social norms can only be changed by involving all stakeholders. This is why we are proposing an integrated intervention which will involve unmarried and married adolescent girls, unmarried and young married men, and their communities. Please feel free to email us at ihmp@ihmp.org or https://twitter.com/IHMP_Pune if you have any questions or comments!
