USAID 4TheChild Establishes Advisory Council for Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Kisumu County

USAID 4TheChild’s DREAMS component is helping adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), ages 9 to 24, lead Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored and Safe lives.

In January, USAID 4TheChild launched an AGYW Advisory Council in Kisumu County to hear the concerns of adolescent girls and young women and advise the project on different interventions being implemented. The AGYW council will ensure the voices of the DREAMS beneficiaries are heard during project planning, implementation, and feedback sessions.

USAID 4TheChild AGYW Advisory Council members during a training session on communication skills and leadership skills. The council will ensure the voice of adolescent girls and young women is heard during project planning, implementation, and feedback sessions

The DREAMS intervention seeks to increase access to quality HIV prevention services by AGYW in 13 wards spread across Kisumu East, Kisumu Central, Muhoroni, and Nyando sub-counites in Kisumu County.

“USAID 4TheChild is keenly aware of the need to listen to our beneficiaries and learn from them,” said Jackson Ulira, DREAMS technical lead. “The AGYW Advisory Council has been set up to hear the voices and experiences of the girls in the project areas, and to harness and expand their energy and ideas to promote and protect health for all.”

The AGYW Advisory Council brings together 13 adolescent girls and young women representing all the wards covered by the project in Kisumu. Two graduates of DREAMS have also been incorporated into the council to help in enriching the discussions using past and present experiences. The young council members will provide advice to the PEPFAR/USAID-funded DREAMS project on issues that increase their peers’ vulnerability to HIV. The council will also serve as a platform for designing and incubating new initiatives and for maintaining and expanding existing meaningful AGYW engagement activities.

“The AGYW Advisory Council members are expected to meet several times a year to discuss issues that matter to their peers and community and voice these concerns to the project and its partners,” said Tabitha Ojwang’, project officer, Child Protection & Quality Improvement. “They will also create awareness about the DREAMS interventions and encourage their peers to adopt comprehensive approaches to preventing HIV.”

USAID 4TheChild has empowered the team on best strategies to engage girls from different cohorts and ensure their concerns and suggestions are factored in to improve service delivery to the beneficiaries. The project has also trained the 15 council members on communications and leadership skills and sensitized them to take active roles as DREAMS Ambassadors, creating demand for HIV services through community awareness sessions and linking/supporting peer referral to gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV testing services.