Adolescent Health and Well-being
In a country with the largest adolescent population in the world, it becomes imperative to prioritise and invest in the needs of youth and adolescents, especially if we are to reap the benefits of our demographic dividend. Population Foundation of India endeavours to achieve this by pivoting its focus on the sexual and reproductive health, wellness, and online safety needs of adolescents and youth. The motive is to support adolescents and youth and imbue them to take informed decisions about their sexuality, health and well-being.
Highlights
- SnehAI was selected for the WhatsApp Incubator Programme: Population Foundation of India’s SnehAI was among the first 10 incubatees selected for Meta’s WhatsApp Incubator Programme. The programme was designed to help prominent organisations working on critical health issues leverage the WhatsApp platform to improve the quality and reach of their services. SnehAI is available on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp messenger. The chatbot also has a voice-enabled feature on the website.
- Launch of Adolescent Problem-Solving Counselling Training (APT) on Educately, in partnership with Sangath: Hosted on our ed-tech platform Educately, APT is a training programme on counselling for common adolescent concerns. It teaches an evidence-based, brief problem-solving counselling intervention that will equip adolescents with coping skills for their mental health concerns.
- Population Foundation of India assisted the government of Uttar Pradesh in prioritising adolescent health and well-being in the new UP Population Policy (2021-2030) by giving primacy to issues surrounding nutrition and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of adolescents.
- We commissioned a study titled ‘Investing in Adolescents-A Case for India’ to generate evidence on the pressing need to invest in adolescent health, nutrition, and education, among others.
- Population Foundation of India provided technical support to the State Health Society Bihar (SHSB) and Bihar State AIDS Control Society (BSACS) in the conceptualisation of Sehat Kendra, a youth-friendly space, which provides accurate information on sexual and reproductive health, mental health, gender, and nutrition to students across 30 colleges in Bihar.
- We mobilised over 500 adolescents to sign and send a letter to the Prime Minister, urging him to acknowledge the aspirations of young people and the need to provide them with opportunities to become self-reliant.
- Under the Feminist and Adolescent Youth-led Action (FAYA) programme, we have completed Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum with more than 10,000 out-of-school adolescents across 200 villages in 4 districts.
