Gender Empowerment & Institutional  Dev. The project will focus on three main components to improve SRHR needs of young people including enhancing LSBE, reducing Child Marriage and preventing AIDS and STI. The key strategies adopted for the project implementation include awareness raising, training and capacity building and policy advocacy.
Life Skills Education:
Life skills represent the psycho-social skills that determine valued behaviour and include reflective skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking, to personal skills such asself-awareness, and to interpersonal skills. Practicing life skills leads to qualities such as self-esteem, sociability and tolerance, to action competencies to take action and generate change, and to capabilities to have the freedom to decide what to doand who to be.
Child Marriage:Child Marriage is one of the most wide-spread human rights violations that exist in the country. Girls from poor households are more likely to be married as children. Being forced into marriage before one is able to give consent violates the basic human rights ofboys and girls. Each day, more than 25,000 young girls around the world become child brides, joining almost 60 million girls who have married before their eighteenth birthday . In particular, girls from the poorest quintile are three times more likely to be married as children than girls from the richest quintile. Prevailing gender inequality, practiced through the custom of dowry, poverty and the supposed #social security# that child marriages bring are importantreasons as to why child marriages are still so widely practiced. Through the proposed initiative we will raise collective voices with the support of other civil society organizations and media to revise the CMRA and make it more punitive. Further, the minimum age for marriage is 16 years for girls and 18 years for boys. Through this initiative it will also be advocated to make 18 years as the minimum age for marriage for all genders.
AIDS and STIs Prevention: Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are among the world#s common communicable diseases with exceeding incidence day by day. More than 1 million people acquire a sexually transmitted infection (STI) every day and each year, and estimated 500 million people become ill with one of four STIs . However,80% of these incidences occur in the developing countries and adolescents and young adults suffer the most. Having far reaching consequences on public health, STIs are often associated with multiple health risks including gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection,syphilis, trichomoniasis, chancroid, genital herpes, genital warts and HIV. High prevalence ofSTIs and related complications in the poor countries are due to inadequate health facilities and barriers to information on these diseases, generally because ofstigma associated with sexual issues. The sexual behavior is a major determinant of STIs, heavily influenced by socio-cultural, economic and political environment. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have re-emerged as a new public health threat in Pakistan against the backdrop of HIV prevalence. STIs facilitate HIV transmission and their Sequelae contribute significantly to the morbidity and mortality in the population. Though it is not a well-researched subject in Pakistan and very limitedauthenticated data is available. A recent study conducted in six urban cities of Pakistan found a prevalence of 4.4% for at least one of the five STIs among men from the general population . In Pakistan, as in many other low-income countries, case management forSTIs is usually sub-optimal due to rampant personal empiricism and inappropriate practices. Further, there is little monitoring of the quality of care, prevention counseling, condom promotion, treatment of partners to reduce the spread of STIs, and referralfor complicated or resistant cases