Don’t you think it is time to celebrate with a gift many of the world’s women desperately want and need: Reproductive Health, including access to information and means to plan a family together with the freedom to decide how many children they will have and when.

Reproductive Health services safeguard the lives of women and their children and promote families that are emotionally and economically healthy. Many women in South Asia are subject to their partners’ views on contraception, feel trapped in physically or emotionally abusive relationships, and marry and have children young instead of pursuing further education or employment outside the home.

With approximately 1 in 2 girls married off before the age of 18, South Asia has the highest prevalence of child marriage in the world.

In Sri Lanka too, child marriages and the incidence of teenage pregnancies are a matter of concern. FPA Sri Lanka has been identified as the lead organisation to take forward the Sexual and Gender-based Violence National Plan of Action: Child Affairs sector plan on 'Prevention of early marriages, and teenage pregnancies”.

Raising awareness on the need for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), projects to prevent teenage pregnancy, collecting information on prevalence of teenage pregnancies, capacity building of Child Rights Promotion Officers (CRPO) and other child related Ministry staff on CSE are some of the of the future activities we will be involved in.  We play a chief role in providing CSE trainings to children and out of school youth; capacity building of CRPO's, Women Development Officers and other Ministry officials on CSE and work towards influencing the Ministry of education to teach the new SRHR curriculum to school children.