"10 out of 10"

[wiwin winarni]

We are in a lockdown situation that hindering us to have face-to-face engagement with our friends involved in the Go Girl Project. However, our online discussion with friends in the field has inspired us on how to outreach a wider potential Go Girl Project's campaigner using social media. Then we agreed to conduct a writing competition on the topic. In collaboration with Dina, a volunteer of IndoCompetence who has transformed into an independent publisher, our initiative has attracted 30 writers, most of them are novice authors but social media natives. We are maximizing this strength to send wider vibes to the Go Girls Project's messages. I reached MariJo to equipped me with the best way to do considering that writers registered are non-programmatic persons. Summing up my conversation with her, there are 10 guiding questions shared with the participants. In addition to this, Widad, one of IndoCompetence's members shared open space for participants to get in touch with adolescent sexual health and rights. And we found that this writing competition will be challenging but worthed to do both for us and those participants.  Up until the deadline reached, we have 20 stories inspired by true stories of teenage pregnancy. I am struggling to ensure that the stories met our objective. In addition to this, we allowed the participants to propose the title and cover of the book as we aimed to make them involved and on the latter teenage pregnancy will inspire their next writings. 

Then, we realized that the experiences of our friends on the two fields need to be captured in the book, then Widad and I visited them last week and created a discussion on the topic. Using 10 questions inspired by my prior discussion with MariJo, there were about 4 teenagers, 2 family planning field staff, and 8 mothers engaged and shared their experiences. The most learning we have from those discussions are:

1. 10 out of 10 girls pregnant at 14-16 years on and have forced marriage as consequences of that situation (for detail please see here https://www.facebook.com/Go-Girl-100890388918885 

2. Existing programs from the government, need to be strengthened by civil societies initiative to ensure that communities and families understand why and how to prevent their teenagers from getting pregnant. No dialogue was conducted during IEC was delivered from service providers nor family planning field workers. (for detail please go to https://www.facebook.com/Go-Girl-100890388918885)

Long way to go, IndoCompetence creates space for local friends in the field to find what to do in the field using their own strengths since we found that for almost 40 years the family planning program working has not been made communities members aware that prevent teenage pregnancy is paramount.

These pictures attached can be used if necessary 

Terima kasih Marie

Wiwin Winarni,
The IndoCompetence Support Team