Advocates for Action  

Advocates for Action is a group of young volunteers working to ensure that all young people have access to accurate                 information about their Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and rights.

The group is coordinated by SPW UK and led by a team of young project leaders. Their work includes lobbying MPs, the         European Union and government departments such as the Department for International Development in the UK (DFID).             Advocates for Action also organises training for other young people interested in the issues to allow them to get involved.         Increasingly the group is seeking to build links with other advocacy groups pushing for young people’s rights in countries             around the world, including Zambia and Uganda.

What Advocates for Action campaigns for:

All too often young people, particularly in the developing world, are put at risk because they can’t access the comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health information and support to make informed decisions about their lives. To allow young people to have their say in their own futures, they need to be at the centre of decisions taken made them and involved in how these decisions are implemented.

This is not acceptable at a time when young people make up so much of the developing world’s population; when they are so vital to their countries’ futures; when they are so heavily hit by HIV and AIDS.

Advocates for Action works in the UK to ensure Government development policies put young people at their centre and seeks the Government’s commitment to the following key aims

• The UK Government must urgently recognise the Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) needs of young people in their development intervention strategies and policies, and must involve young people as active participants in their policy development.
• Funding for youth SRH must be increased with a focus on support for community and school based programmes and those that address the wider causes of vulnerability.
• The UK Government must use their influence with national governments of developing countries ensuring that They involve young people in decision-making and policy development and include an explicit focus on youth SRH in country-level development strategies. They include comprehensive SRH as part of the mandatory national education curriculum and ensure that schools are accountable for delivering this.
  

For more information, including a video Advocates for Action have produced about the issue, please visit our homepage: http://advocates4action.wordpress.com/ . You can also download our Advocacy Toolkit.

If you have any questions or you would like to get involved, please email diarmaid.mcdonald@spw.org