First Lady From Burkina Faso Heads Knowledge Sharing Mission To Jamaica

June 24, 2013

Jamaica’s strategy for addressing teen pregnancy has caught the eye of the Government of Burkina Faso. First Lady of that African country, Her Excellency Chantal Compaoré is now in Jamaica leading a high level knowledge sharing Mission; June 24-29 to learn about the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF) and its experience in preventing adolescent pregnancies and supporting adolescent mothers.

The Mission organized by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, Sub-regional office for the Caribbean, and the UNFPA country office in Burkina Faso will see the First Lady and her team, holding talks with various stakeholders who work in the area of adolescent pregnancy. Other participants on the Mission inc lude, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Women Promotion and Gender, Nestorine Sangare, and Head of Capacity Building in the Ministry of Women Promotion and Gender, Koudraogo Kabore

The team will visit the WCJF’s, main centre in Kingston as well as several of its sites. The visits to the Women’s Centre locations will allow the team to interact with the management, staff and students of the Adolescent Mothers’ programme in order to understand the strategy being used by Jamaica to address the problem of teen pregnancy. The team will also be meeting with representatives from the Ministries of Health and Education. The aim is to learn enough about the strategy being used by the government of Jamaica to allow them to adapt and replicate the approach in the Burkina Faso context.

According to the UNFPA 2012 State of World Population report, Burkina Faso has an adolescent birth rate of 130 per 1000 women aged 15-19. This is similar to the adolescent birth rate of 137 births per 1000 which Jamaica had almost forty years ago. Latest data put Jamaica’s adolescent birth rate at 72 births per 1000.

The Centre is a Government initiative that provides continuing education, counseling and skills training for girls 17 years and under who become pregnant while still in school. There are currently seven main centres and eight outreach centres island- wide.

The UNFPA sub-regional office for the Caribbean has provided technical and financial support to the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation for many years as part of the effort to reduce the risk of unintended second pregnancies.

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First Lady From Burkina Faso Heads Knowledge Sharing Mission To Jamaica