Tamale NGO launches sexuality project

Savana Signatures (SavSign), a Tamale based NGO, has launched a Sexual Health Education Plus (SHE+) project designed to educate young people on their sexual reproductive health and rights.

The SHE+ project is a platform that allows young people who have mobile phones to access and seek Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) information as means of helping to address some adolescent issues.

Mr. Frederick Nuuri-Teg, Project Officer of SHE+ speaking at the launch on Monday said Savana Signatures launched an earlier project dubbed: "Sexual Health Education" (SHE) platform, which offered the youth the opportunity to access SRHR information using their mobile phones, which had been a success.

He said several reproductive health programs in the country were largely targeting young people who are in schools with little attention to the many young ones out of school and that the SHE+ would give them equal opportunity to access information on their SRHR -using their mobile phones.

He said the SHE+ platform was giving young people from the Northern and the Volta regions a greater opportunity to have direct contact with health professionals on their SRHR needs.

Mr. Nuuri-Teg advised the youth- especially girls- to try as much as possible to seek information on sexual related issues -to avoid teenage pregnancies and HIV/AIDs. He emphasized that it was important to discard the belief that it was a taboo to discuss sexual related issues with young people.

He said two help lines had been provided for persons in the operational areas in the Northern and the Volta regions to call and speak directly with health professionals on sexuality, which, according to him would help reduce teenage pregnancies and other sexual transmitted diseases.

He expressed the hope that the project would fill the gap by providing easy access both to the youth in schools as well as those out of school to free SRHR information through a mobile based platform in order to guide Ghanaian youth to make well informed decisions in life on sexual related issues.

Savana Signatures (SavSign) is a Tamale-based NGO interested in the empowerment of youth and women through education, mainly by the use of Information and Communication Technologies as a catalyst for rapid development.