About the WeLead Project.

Girls Power Initiative (GPI) Calabar center, with support from HIVOS is implementing the WeLead Project in Cross River State. WeLead is a new, inspiring and innovative program that aims to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of young women.

The program puts four specific groups of young women as Rights Holders: those living with HIV, those with disabilities, LGBTQI+ and those affected by displacement.

The project aims to ensure that Rights Holders play a leading role in strengthened and inclusive organisations and movements that enjoy increased public support and have convinced duty-bearers and health-service providers to take steps towards implementing laws, policies and practices that respect and protect these young women’s SRH-R by 2025.

The project will include developing a robust strategic plan to operationalize this objective and implementation of clusters of activities designed to enhance the capacity of health service providers, CSOs/CBOs, networks and movements to promote and defend the SRHR of Right Holders.

The Project outcomes include

1. Increased acknowledgement and support of young women’s SRH-R by the general public.

2. Strengthened CSOs are inclusive of or led by young women from four rights holder groups, and work together in a Community of Action (CoA) to defend and promote their SRH-R

3. Health service providers will be more aware of the SRH-R needs and situation of rights holder groups, and increasingly provide accessible, comprehensive, high quality, inclusive and respectful SRH-R information and services

4. Duty-bearers will increasingly design, adopt and implement laws and policies that respect and protect the SRH-R of young women from rights holder groups

These will be achieved through capacity building trainings, mentoring and coaching, capacity strengthening of Right Holders and Duty Bearers, advocacy, media campaigns/awareness raising, networking, community dialogues with relevant stakeholders etc.