Cameroon Agenda for Sustainable Development
Where can an adolescent girl from Bameda, Cameroon learn about her Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)? At the ice-cream truck across the street. But instead of ice-cream, this innovative mobile space offers information on contraception and family planning, specially geared to adolescent girls. An easily accessible fun-looking space is more likely to encourage young people to access SRHR information without the fear of being stigmatized.
Over the last 6 months, we have counselled at least 50 adolescent girls daily on SRHR, especially family planning, and offered them referral cards to receive subsidized family planning services at youth-friendly partner clinics
The need for such innovative ideas is in high demand in a country where more than 2 million women want to avoid a pregnancy, but only 37% of them are using a modern contraceptive method.
Girls Choice Ice Cream is only one of the projects of Cameroon Agenda for Sustainable Development (CASD), a member of the Coalition since 2013. The organization was founded in 2011 by a group of young people led by Numfor Munteh, as a response to the Cameroonian government’s new development agenda, which failed to prioritize SRHR sufficiently.
Today CASD continues the fight to empower women and girls around the world through choice, one of the Coalition’s strategic Pillars. “We believe it is time for nations to adopt policies that allow young people to make informed contraception choices freely. 21% of girls aged 15-19 years in Cameroon have been pregnant at least once. Political and sociocultural barriers to access modern contraception partly account for these adolescent pregnancies.” - Numfor Munteh, CASD
