The FP2030 Performance Monitoring and Evidence working group is offering a volunteer professional development fellowship for young professionals in the field of family planning measurement. The youth fellows will participate in PME WG meetings, work on areas of future work/small group activities and grow professionally in the global family planning measurement field. The youth fellows will be able to communicate with all PME WG members and the FP2030 team to build networks and expand leadership in this field. The youth fellowship is a rotational seat on the PME WG with a two-year term.
Month: October 2021
News and Updates from FP2030
It is an exciting moment to be writing, just ahead of the important changes taking place at FP2030 — changes that will officially mark the completion of our year of transition and the start of the next phase of our global partnership.
Married and Pregnant Adolescent Girls: Understanding Their Contexts and Futures
Today, 650 million girls and women were married as children, and currently over 1 in 5 girls are married before the age of 18. Many donors, international and civil society organizations, and others have advocated for and allocated resources to end child marriage, which has led to reductions in this practice, particularly in South and Central Asia. However, it’s important to remember that even as rates of early marriage decline, the absolute number of adolescent girls who are subjected to child marriage is likely to increase, as the overall population of adolescents grows. What’s more, COVID-19 appears to have reversed many of the gains made in previous years, and around 10 million additional girls are expected to marry by 2030 due to the pandemic’s social and economic disruptions.
Engaging Men and Boys Is Critical to Gender Equality and Family Planning
Much of the literature on family planning and reproductive health is women-centered. This makes sense — family planning is incredible for women. It protects their physical health by allowing them to space their children and reduce high-risk pregnancies, enables and empowers them to pursue economic and educational opportunities, and helps improve their mental health by allowing them to choose when to have children, if at all.
