In Madagascar and many other contexts, decisions made at the higher level about family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) are often disconnected from knowledge and experience held at the local level – particularly when it comes to issues affecting youth. Projet Jeune Leader developed an innovative knowledge management approach to close the gap and shape more responsive, effective programs and policies. Through our “Ampitapitao” (or “Pass it On”) magazine series, we have created a critical loop between local knowledge on FP/RH and national level decision making processes in Madagascar, capturing over 8,000 comments from local community members in the process.

Projet Jeune Leader developed “CSE We Can Count On,” a publication sharing strategies and practical tools for how to build and harness community support for in-school comprehensive sexuality education. The core publication is supplemented by a library of practical resources. The strategies and actions we share here help us build lasting, trusting relationships with students, parents, teachers, and school officials. Importantly, they also prevent and address misconceptions and misunderstandings about CSE within our partner communities.

Lack of support for CSE disrupts its delivery and may partially explain why there are few examples of scaled-up, sustainable programs, especially in resource-constrained contexts where youth need it most. Projet Jeune Leader’s initial evidence suggests our Educators have positive “brand power” for creating support for CSE. Using an innovative, participatory research methodology called collaborative filmmaking, Projet Jeune Leader has produced new insights into how our CSE Educators have been able to shift attitudes in support for sexuality education at the community level in Madagascar.

To realize impact at scale, Projet Jeune Leader is working alongside Madagascar’s Ministry of Education to mainstream our comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) program into the country’s education system. To capture our implementation learnings and processes in (near) real-time, we developed this series of briefs which distill the package of strategies we used to deliver and scale this promising model of CSE in Madagascar’s public school system. We are actively adding to this resource library throughout 2023.