Partners implemented a two-year project to support activities that helped prevent teenage pregnancy in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.

Developing the Program

Working together, the Belize-Michigan, Guatemala-Alabama and Honduras-Vermont partnerships discussed and planned a two-year series of projects and programs that would:

1. Identify successful approaches to adolescent reproductive health, especially those that target males, and design strategies to help replicate and/or expand them, with an emphasis on involving organizations outside of traditional family planning networks.

2. Link organizations in the target countries to family planning and youth serving organizations in their US Partner states that can support their efforts and serve as conduits, along with the US chapters, for program models and materials that may be relevant to US communities.

3. Share country and regional strategies to increase awareness of the health, economic and environmental costs of adolescent pregnancies, through workshops, publications and Partners Web site.

General Project Activities

Partners convened two workshops for family planning groups and youth serving organizations in order to share specific models and materials aimed at adolescent reproductive health. The workshops included representatives of US organizations involved with adolescent reproductive health, identified by the US chapters. Coalition building and ways of promoting collaboration were emphasized. Click here to find out more information on our workshops in Belize and Honduras.

Partners also offered technical assistance and training to help strengthen, expand, or replicate existing community based projects. This included training for local organizations and individuals in a position to influence youth -- parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, peers -- to improve their ability to reach young people with family planning information.

As a key component of many of the programs, small grants ($1000-$5000) for community-based projects were disbursed for activities aimed at helping young people defer child bearing.

So, What Happened in Central America?

In Honduras,

The Honduras-Vermont Partners provided financial and human resources to COMVIDA-Choloma, a collaborative project that is coordinated through a network of thirty two community organizations. Choloma is a small industrial city located near San Pedro Sula. By concentrating on a smaller geographic area but one that is representative of the growing trends in adolescent life in Honduras, the COMVIDA-Choloma project is progressing toward the goal of adolescent pregnancy prevention and providing alternative life choices for youth. The main components of the project include creating youth organizations, education and training, counseling, institutional coordination through community networks, training and follow-up for the formation of youth microenterprise projects. To date, the project has effectively integrated 566 boys and 121 girls into the program. Some of the program activities include:

• Identifying and organizing youth leaders who have agreed to form youth groups within their own neighborhood communities

• Designing a collaborative training program for youth leaders to be held during school vacations

• Consulting with youths about their desires and interests in relation to recreation and training in order to establish constructive options for their use of free time

• Furnishing and equipping a training center for youths

• Organizing a youth drama group

• Creating the Network of Institutions for the Adolescents of Choloma, composed of 32 organizations and institutions within the municipality of Choloma, as the coordinating body to provide effective project support. Participating organizations include the Choloma Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Choloma Municipal Corporation, Choloma Health Center, Choloma Junior Chamber, Red Cross of Choloma, and the Honduran Institute of Social Security - to name a few.

Since technical assistance exchange is a fundamental component of any Partners' project, the three main project coordinators of COMVIDA-Choloma traveled to Vermont in November 2000 to visit with their Partner chapter, organizations and institutions that work in the area of adolescent pregnancy prevention and reproductive health, and local community leaders and elected officials.

In Guatemala,

With the stated project objective to reduce pregnancies among girls between the ages of 12 and 18, Guatemala-Alabama Partners trained 25 volunteer coordinators in methodology and program specifics on sexual education. The volunteers were broken down into the geographic locations of Guatemala City, Escuintla, Zacapa, Teculutan, Coban and Sacatepequez. Two training sessions were held in Guatemala in order to orient the volunteers to the project and to provide training.
Asociacion Pro-Bienestar de la Familia (Association for the Well-Being of the Family), a non-governmental organization in Guatemala with a large network in the field of family planning, facilitated these training sessions.

Through the two regional workshops, Guatemala-Alabama was able to share with the other two partnerships their experiences in the project. At the last workshop in August 2000, held in Honduras, the project coordinators identified the next steps in their efforts to reduce teen pregnancy. As Phase II of their project, the Guatemala Partners held training workshops in the target cities of Antigua, Escuintla, Guatemala City, Teculutan, Zacapa, Casillas and Coban. A Partner volunteer from Alabama, Hernan Prado, who works with young Latinos in Alabama, provided technical assistance during one of these workshops in the periphery of Guatemala City in June 2000. Hernan worked with the Guatemala Partners to develop and revise the methodology for the remaining workshops. Two more volunteers from Alabama with professional experience in teen pregnancy prevention also visited the project in Guatemala in order to share their experiences, resources and knowledge. Equally important, the project coordinators from Guatemala planned visits to Alabama to visit various family planning and youth-serving organizations and local schools.

The Guatemala-Alabama partnership has made and will continue to make positive inroads within the targeted communities in order to combat the rising need for family planning. The resistance from some educators to introduce sexual education material into their classrooms and from fathers to approach this subject with their children will prove to be a challenge, albeit a surmountable one, in this project.

In Belize,

The Belize-Michigan Partners implemented an adolescent reproductive health project called "Thinking! Talking! Taking Action!" Through its collaboration with several organizations and government agencies, including the National Organization for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the Belize Partners coordinated youth camps that provide education on reproductive health and family planning as well as vocational and skills training. In January 2000, the Belize-Michigan Partners held a five-day adolescent health camp, which was covered by the local media. Other activities include the design and implementation of a one-year training program in the targeted communities of Belize City, Dangriga, Punta Gorda and Belmopan.