Youth Advocates Gha-na (YAG) in partnership with Marie Stopes on Wednesday concluded a Capacity Strengthen-ing Workshop for School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Coordinators and Adolescent Health Focal Persons in the Northern and Upper East Regions of Ghana.
The three-day capacity strengthening workshop held in Tamale, an activity under the "Youth for Health" (Y4H) project co-funded by the European Com-mission and the Ministry of For-eign Affairs of Denmark,sought to educate SHEP Coordinators and Adolescent Health Focal Per-sons in the Northern and Upper East Regions of Ghana.
The workshop also sought to enable the youth to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and ensure that their human rights were respected, protected and fulfilled.
Addressing participants at the workshop, the Executive Director of Youth Advocates Ghana, Mr Emmanuel Ametepey, stressed that the Y4H project's primary focus was to strengthen adolescent in-and out- of school programmes in Y4H implementing districts.
The project is being implement-ed at Nanton, Nanumba North, and Saboba in the Northern Region and Binduri, Bongo, and Bolgatan-ga East in the Upper East Region
"As major stakeholders in the adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (ASRHR) sector, YAG is passionate about adoles-cent reproductive health and will continue to take up initiatives that will help grow, sustain and expand adolescent reproductive health sys-tems in Ghana in order to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy, female genital mutilation, gender-based violence, amongst others, hence this learning workshop," Mr Ametepey noted.
In her remarks, the National Director, School Health Education Programme and a facilitator of the training, Ms Theresa Op-pong- Mensah stated that, "We all have a role in ensuring we train the upcoming adolescents to be responsible adults in society, hence collaboration is important. Let's make it a point to take up initiatives to support this course".
On his part, the Programme Coordinator, SHEP, Ghana Edu-cation Service, Mr Ernest Amoah Ampah, highlighted the need to target both adolescent boys and girls in order not to leave adoles-cent behind.
MrAmpah further elaborated ways to promote Adolescent mental health, the importance of mental health, mental health problems, causes of poor mental health state of adolescents and possible signs to identify a mental health state of an adolescent.
The participants' express grati-tude for the workshop and pledged to contribute in their own way to help build and strengthen adoles-cent reproductive health systems in Ghana.
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"Beyond the rather obvious reproductive health issues faced by adolescents, stakeholders should engage young people to unearth shared issues facing them, hence I am going back from this workshop with learnings I am going to pass to my peers to enable strengthen our adolescent reproductive health systems," noted an adolescent reproductive health youth advocate from Tamale, Iddrisu Aliu.
"As adults and role models of adolescents, let's make it a point to counsel them and address issues and abuse they face to avoid STIs, unwanted pregnancies. This work-shop has broadened my knowl-edge in ASHR and will guide my future interactions with adoles-cents in my district and communi-ty," Added Zenabu Sadiq, a Public Health Nurse from Tamale.
The Youth for Health (Y4H) project aims to increase demand for, and access to, high-quality, dis-crimination free ASRHR informa-tion and services; increase public sector willingness and capacity to deliver and sustain high-quality ASRHR information and services, and improve enabling policy and funding environment at regional, national, and sub-national level of the project.
