A project in partnership with Manusher Jonno Foundation

The objectives of the project is to empower adolescent girls and boys in asserting their rights with special emphasis on preventing early marriage, dowry, repressions etc. At the same time this tries to make sure the adolescents girls’ freedom of movement and freedom of work so that they go forward in equity developing their life and livelihood. The project organizes the adolescent girls (majority) and boys into Associations of Primary Stakeholders (PS). Training and technical assistances are provided to them, and some pioneer members of the associations act as Peer Leaders in various empowering actions of the PS. They, on their turn, organize Local Support Groups (LSG) and volunteer ‘Change Makers’ (CM) from among the community for support in the program. Besides, local Advanced Adolescent and Young Women’s Organization is also organized and strengthened to achieve the project’s goals.

The main strategies of the CMES’s Adolescent Girls’ Program such as Gender Session, Solidarity Conventions, Social Actions, Empowering Income Generating Activities etc. are adapted towards the objectives of the project.

The advocacy and campaigns to reach the Secondary Target Group consisting of the general community members– especially girls and women– help to widen the impact of the project and to create an enabling environment for it. Documentations and local successes are used as instruments in the advocacies for national policy impacts.

The project is conducted through establishing Outreach Centres in wider areas around the relevant units which currently number seven – in Dinajpur Sadar; Kawnia, Rangpur; Puthia, Natore, Baghati, Rajpara, Shahmogdum, Polea in Rajshahi; Kalihati & Sadar in Tangail; Sripur and Kapasia in Gazipur, and Borguna Sadar, Amtoli in Borguna.