Transform Lives of 70,000 Afghan Adolescent Girls

One of AIL’s focus age groups is adolescent girls.  AIL reaches them and improves their lives and prospects through its educational offerings, in depth training and health program.

AIL runs a comprehensive Health Program that encompasses health treatment, health education and health training. The workshop program is very popular and in 2014 AIL provided 11 Reproductive Health Workshops for 390 women. These women learned about their bodies, pregnancy and birth and newborn care. They are now much better equipped to care for themselves as they go through life. Many younger women have babies early in life so having access to this knowledge early is very important. The workshop participants vary in age and background, sometimes there are a few under the age of 20 other times as many as three quarters of the group are under the age of 20. Even if it is their mother who attends a workshop, an adolescent girl still benefits from the knowledge the mother brings home and shares with her daughter and the changed behavior in the household. All of this improves that girl’s chance of a healthy life and safe child bearing years.

AIL also provides 3 hour Expectant Mother Workshops (EM) which are another quick and easy way for women to learn what they need to know. In 2014, AIL gave 15 EM Workshops for 380 women (190  pregnant) and remarkably all of the 137 births recorded so far were at clinics rather than a risky home birth situation. In the four years this program has been running only one recorded birth occurred at home out of 439 births. AIL is helping to create an attitude that clinic based birth is an accepted new norm in  society. In addition to its focused workshops, AIL has provided thousands of women with reproductive health education through the AIL clinics and Community Health Workers posts. Many of the females who attend these talks are adolescent girls mothers of adolescent girls.

Thank you for your interest in Afghan women’s health issues in Afghanistan.