SAFE II – фонд для вовлечения молодежи и создания сетей в области охраны сексуального и репродуктивного здоровья и соответствующих прав в будущем

On 17 October, Representatives from 16 IPPF Member Associations and collaborative partners including the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers of the European Commission gathered in Brussels for the final meeting of the Sexual Awareness for Europe (SAFE II) project advancing young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in Europe.

The project has reached its end but the meeting confirmed that knowledge and skills obtained by young people will stay as an important source for the further improvements in the area of sexual and reproductive health; and a clear conclusion of the meeting was that one of the main achievements of SAFE II is youth involvement and networking.

“The data and other results gathered through the SAFE II project will be used to inform future strategies, policies and interventions on young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights” , said Vicky CLAEYS, IPPF EN Regional Director.

Participants of the meeting discussed the main results of SAFE II which were presented in the main areas: qualitative research, good practices and policies.

This project has been co-financed from the EU Health Programme 2008-2013 and activities have covered a broad spectrum of the topical issues such as unplanned pregnancies in young women, early intercourse and how to ensure that messages during sexuality education activities are based on evidence, information needs and possibilities of young people, communication with teenagers on sexuality, improvement of the quality of youth friendly services and many others.

As IPPF is celebrating its 60th Anniversary this year, Gunta Lazdane, Programme Manager, Sexual and Reproductive Health on behalf of the WHO Regional Office for Europe congratulated the IPPF European Network with achievements during these years and saluted the good collaboration between both organizations working in the area of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Gunta Lazdane confirmed that the recently adopted European Health 2020 policy framework gives one more possibility to strengthen partnership in decreasing inequities for health including young people.

As part of this event, IPPF European Network (IPPF EN) launched the report “Increasing the Knowledge base on young people’s SRHR in Europe - Summary report of qualitative research conducted in five European countries under the SAFE II Project”. In addition, 5 country research factsheets giving more detail on the qualitative research conducted by Member Associations in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the Czech Republic were presented.