Empowering Inclusive SRH Services: MSIE South Area Forges Partnership with Ethiopian Center for Disability and Development (ECDD)

The Marie Stopes International Ethiopia South Area Program Office has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with?Ethiopian Center For Disability and Development (ECDD) Association Hawassa Branch in December 2023.

The MoU is signed between the two parties to improve disability inclusive sexual and reproductive health services uptake and enabling policy for people with disability to fulfill the sexual and reproductive health and right.

The purpose of the agreement is also to strengthening the referral and improved access to high quality sexual and reproductive health services for the people with disability within the MSI Ethiopia supported public health facilities and MSI Ethiopia outreach sites.

On the signing ceremony the two parties agreed to work together to mitigate the gap?that the people with disabilities face in relation with?sexual and reproductive health services, they aspire to work together to raise awareness for young people living with disability through appropriate methods.?

They agreed to strengthen the referral linkage, raise the youth to claim their rights regarding family planning and SRH services. The MSIE in its part agreed to work with the Ethiopian Center for Disability Development Association to integrate any event to conduct awareness raising workshops for young people living with disability.

In addition, it is also agreed to distribute IEC and BCC materials that focused on the targeted group to advocate on the importance of transforming social and gender norms that have adverse effect on the over all sexual and reproductive health of the targeted group.

The scope of the implementation areas?are?Sidama?Region, Sodo,?Gedio?and?Wolaita?Zones. According to the MoU the association is obliged to provide disability inclusion awareness creation training for MSI team members, jointly work on advocacy and promote the need of SRH services for people with disabilities, assign focal persons to facilitate mobilization SRH services at woreda level and more.

The MSI Ethiopia South Area Office in its part agreed to provide sensitization workshop for person with disability, deliver SRH services in MSI service delivery outlets MSI- OR sites, PSS, and Clinics, conduct public facility assessment and audit on the readiness and responsiveness of facilities of disability inclusion and much more.?

At the signing ceremony representatives from both organizations stressed their commitment to wards the realization of the agreement and hoping the outcomes would be positive.

Meseret Demissie Samson Dubale

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