A two-day capacity building workshop aimed at facilitating effective and collaborative implementation of an adolescent girls’ empowerment project has opened in Kumasi.

It is being attended by community-based organizations, health workers, media and other non-state actors drawn from the project implementing communities.

The adolescent empowerment project, which is being implemented by the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR), aims at helping to identify and provide the adolescent needs of girls in the country.

It is being implemented in five regions of the country under the theme: “Empowering Adolescent Girls through improved access to reproductive health information and services and quality gender-responsive services”.

The goal is to improve access to information on reproductive and gender-responsive health services for out-of-school girls between the ages of 10 and 19 years.

It is also to empower adolescent girls to make informed decisions on their reproductive health and rights, as part of a comprehensive strategy to address teenage pregnancy.

The five-year project, which started in 2018, is being funded by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Canadian government.

The beneficiary districts are Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem district in the central, Bosome-Freho district in Ashanti, South Dayi in Volta, Nzema East in Western and Ashiedu-Keteke sub-district in the Greater Accra region.

Mr. Nii Ankonu Annorbah-Sarpei, Programme Director of ARHR, speaking at the opening session underlined the need to sensitize adolescent girls on sexual reproductive health and rights.

This, according to him would position them well to make informed choices on their reproductive health to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Mr Annorbah-Sarpei explained that girls could make the right choices and control their sexual behaviour if they were provided with accurate and relevant information on their reproductive health to make them more assertive.

Ms. Doris Ampong, Communication Officer at the ARHR, said already sensitization programmes on gender-responsive topics relating to sexual reproductive health for over 5,000 adolescent girls had been undertaken with about 2,000 of them recommended for health facility and outreach contraceptive services.

In addition, about 25 girls with disabilities have been trained on sexual reproductive health rights and legal literacy.