Health & Life Skills

Across Kenya, adolescents are not taught about health and life skills in consistent, rights-based ways, and lack the pressing answers they seek about their changing bodies. Due to deeply ingrained social taboos, these topics are not regularly discussed at home or in the classroom.  

At ZanaAfrica, we’re working to change that by developing inspiring, aspirational transformative educational resources to unlock a universe of support for adolescents. 

We create innovative rights-based menstrual and reproductive health and rights education (MRHE) designed specifically for adolescents. Informed through the insights of girls and the communities we serve, we have created a 25 session health program delivered in schools by safe adults, over the course of 18-months. This program was adapted from best practice resources in adolescent health education. This is an interactive curriculum that can be shared by teachers, mentors, and or/community health workers to provide accurate and engaging health and rights information to youth, helping them to have more control over their bodies, decisions and futures. 

Leveraging the methodology of social and behavior change communications, along with Nia Yetu we have created Nia Teen, a series of youth-centric printed magazines which serves as a corresponding textbook for Nia Yetu, designed to improve the health, confidence and agency of adolescents across Kenya.

This is a proven solution that has been evaluated through a Randomized Control Trial, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in partnership with the Population Council and Plan International. The compelling results of this study can be found here.