Improving Adolescents’ Lives in Afghanistan (IALA)

Recent figures count one in four people in Afghanistan as adolescent (age 10-19). This is significant proportion of the population at a critical age range. Yet many adolescents in Afghanistan do not have opportunities to break cycles of deprivation. Girls in particular: Leave school early: upper secondary enrolment is only 24% ; Are mal-nourished and anaemic: 17.1% of girls age 15-19 are underweight ; and And marry early, are subjected to violence, and are deprived of sexual and reproductive rights: nearly one in six (15.2%) girls is married before 16 . Adolescents in Afghanistan are largely invisible as citizens, excluded from decisions that affect them and have limited access to information. They also have limited opportunities to acquire and share knowledge and to actively participate in decision-making processes. To address this gap, the IALA Consortium, through a partnership between UNICEF Afghanistan, targets a quarter of the population in 11 districts in Bamyan and Badghis, over a 38-month reach the overall goal of this project of improving the lives of adolescents by increasing the autonomy that adolescent girls and boys have over decisions affecting their lives through life skills, self-expression activities, and community engagement. A total of 3,601 adolescent boys and girls (1,897 adolescent girls or 48%) have been selected as members of the Multi-Purpose Adolescent Groups (MAG) and trained and mentored as peer educators in life skills topics. To date, MAG members reached at least 28,760 adolescents (15,295 girls or 53%) with peer mentoring and awareness sessions on life skills, leading to improved self-confidence, communication and decision making skills among adolescents.