Ministry Launches 20 Mn USD Family Planning Project for Married Girls

ENA,February 20/2020 A 20 million USD project called “Road Map for Integrating Smart Start in Ethiopia" (RISE), which enables married adolescent girls to make full, free and informed decisions to select contraception methods best suited to their unique situation, was launched today.

Launching the project, Health State Minister Dr. Lia Tadesse said Road Map for Integrating Smart Start in Ethiopia (RISE) project is the extension of Adolescent 360 project which was launched on January 2016 to increase access to voluntary modern contraception among adolescent girls of 15 to 19 years old.

She added that RISE aims at scaling up Smart Start program over the next five years with an ambitious goal to serve one million married adolescent girls in six regional states.

RISE project empowers and provides necessary tools for health professionals to better enable married adolescent girls to make full, free, and informed decisions to select contraception method that is best suited to their unique situation, Dr. Lia explained.

It helps young married women articulate their goals, plan for their family in partnership with their husbands and reshape their future life.

The project will be implemented in Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Somali and Afar, it was indicated.

Since the beginning of the Smart Start program in 2018, some 63,000 married adolescents have participated in counseling sessions and over 30,500 married adolescents chose to take up contraceptive method in 36 Woredas across the regions of Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples.    

The project is funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and the Government of Ethiopia, with technical support of Population Services International-Ethiopia.