By Steve Chirombo

Dedza, May 29, Mana: Principal Nutrition and HIV Officer (PNHAO), for Dedza district council, Lottie Makina, on Thursday, hailed the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) alliance partner, Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education (CYECE), for updating the council and partners on programme progress.

In Dedza district, under the alliance, CYECE has been implementing a program pilot dubbed “TlivesSHARP (Transforming Lives-SRHR Accountability, Resilience and Policy transformation for African Young People) in Malawi” around Chikuse Health Centre in the area of Traditional Authority Kasumbu.

Speaking at the closing of a program’s review meeting which brought together members of the District Health Management Team (DHMT) and District Aids Coordinating Committee (DACC), Makina said it is important that when partners start a project, they need to come back to relevant committees for update sharing.

“It is through these forums that we address the challenges encountered in the course of project implementation. It is disheartening to see projects dying once a partner leaves because we do not have an exit strategy,” he said.

According to Makina, transmission plans, exit strategies as well as building capacity at the local level are some of the key features in the sustainability of every program and these are planned well when project progress is shared.

He however hailed the SRHR alliance for ensuring that youths are greatly taking part in the project implementation.

“The youth are the future of the nation. Above all, 2063 is youth-centric. So, very sick or unhealthy youth cannot contribute effectively hence a need for them to fully access the SRHR services,” he pointed out.

On her part, CYECE’s District Coordinator for Dedza, Chifundo Kamulete, said the program aims to ensure that young people are able to access SRHR services by aligning the digital tools in order to advocate for access to SRHR services among young people.

“We trained some youth champions in the area who were able to reach out to their fellow youth and to demand services of SRHR as well as to make them aware of what SRHR services are at the facility and also what SRHR issues and barriers that young people are facing in their communities,” she said.

She further said more youth prefer reaching out to the champions and hearing how they could access the services, health centres as well as nearby facilities.

“As the program seeks to progress, there is a need for service provision and collaboration with different service providers, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and also scale-up to other areas,” she stressed.

The programme is being implemented with funds from SIDA through SAFAIDS.