The Feminist Adolescent and Youth-Led Action (FAYA) Project provides stigma free and rights affirming information on SRHR to 10,000 adolescents and youth across 4 districts in Rajasthan (Bundi, Karauli, Dungarpur and Tonk) by implementing out of school Comprehensive Sexuality Education sessions. Further, it enables them to advocate for access to services and rights with peers and family members, communities and state and national level policy makers and implementers. The programme aims to reach out to 50,000 adolescents through peer led and direct advocacy and campaigns over a period of three years.

Rajasthan is among Indian states with the highest rates of early, child and forced marriages. In Tonk and Karauli, almost upto 50% of girls were married before the legal age (NFHS4). While districts with larger Tribal populations like Dungarpur are less restrictive and allow young people greater choice in marriage, there are several other gendered  cultural restrictions that inhibit the agency and autonomy of adolescents. Caste based violence and discrimination play a big role in access to information, rights and services in Karauli which also has a high rage of teen pregnancy. Based on the …….. Report, 10.8% of teenage girls were pregnant or had a child, and where condom usage stood only at 4.8%. Overall, ittle to no awareness on state-run health services and initiatives, and stringent social norms that restrict their freedom of expression, lead to  poor access to information about their bodies, realtionships, sex, sexuality and even health for adolescents. Given these socio-cultural and demographic factors across the implementation districts, the FAYA Project takes an intersectional approach to engage adolescents and young individuals on issues related to Comprehensive Sexuality Education.

Key components of the project:

Peer to Peer Education

Adolescents have consistently identified that they are most comfortable in talking to their peers when it comes to information around SRH issues and themes. Therefore peer education has been identified as an appropriate model to extend programme objectives to the larger community of adolescents residing in our selected geographies.

In each district, after CSE delivery is complete, 500 Peer Educators (PEs) will be selected by identifying those adolescents who have attended all (or most) sessions of the curriculum. These PEs will choose CSE thematics that are most relevant to the needs of their own communities, and will take those forward by running group sessions with their peers.

The aim of the Peer Education component along with the Youth-Led Advocacy and Fellowship models of the programme is to indirectly reach a total of 40,000 adolescents in Bundi, Karauli, Tonk and Dungarpur. 

Youth-Led Advocacy

An important component of the project is the youth-led advocacy process, 200 Youth leaders will be trained on content that will touch upon the basics of advocacy, SRHR thematics and related policies; with handholding support provided by district field officers. The process will enable the young leaders to:

• build an understanding of basic advocacy including knowledge of different state and national level policies for adolescents and young people in the country
• develop a rights-based understanding on access to contraceptive information and services, safe abortion services and comprehensive abortion care
• learn how to run a youth-friendliness  audit of public SRHR services

The objective is to identify existing gaps and challenges in and generate recommendations to ensure adolescents’ and young people’s access to SRHR information and services and, create platforms for multi-stakeholder dialogue on adolescents’ and young people’s access to SRHR information and services