Nigeria is to benefit from a $20.5-million supplemental grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Initiative to focus more on adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health issues.
The Challenge Initiative, the global programme been awarded the grant is now actively implementing its evidence-based urban reproductive health interventions in 52 cities across four regions: East Africa, Francophone West Africa, Nigeria and India.
The supplemental award will allow the Initiative to address the needs of youth, ages 15 to 24 years, with best-practice programming, in addition to its programmes already being implemented for women and men living in poor urban communities.
Jose “Oying” Rimon, the initiative’s Director and Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health Senior Scientist at the Bloomberg School stated: “globally, many adolescents don’t have access to the sexual and reproductive health information they need to make informed choices and this can keep communities trapped in a cycle of poverty.
“We are so grateful that the Gates Foundation has made it possible for The Challenge Initiative to use our ‘business unusual’ approach to really make a difference in the lives of youth.”
The Initiative will now layer adolescent and youth programming onto its already existing portfolio in the cities where it is currently working. Thirty-five of those cities have already formally expressed interest in this new area of focus.
In addition to adolescent and youth programming, the new award provides funding to enhance the Initiative’s monitoring and evaluation efforts, as well as implement a robust new learning agenda.
With this award, the Initiative is now a $59.5-million, five-year (2016 – 2021) programme. This investment has also attracted investments from other donors.
The Challenge Initiative is a “business unusual” approach to financing, scaling up and sustaining high-impact family planning solutions for the urban poor.
It represents one of the Gates Foundation’s largest family planning investments to date—a substantial effort to mobilize and diversify resources to scale up family planning approaches already successfully implemented in urban India, Nigeria, Senegal and Kenya.
The Initiative is demand-driven—local governments self-select to participate and demonstrate political commitment by bringing their own financial, material and human resources. In return, the Initiative provides technical expertise as well as support from its Challenge Fund.