The project ‐ Building Collaboration, Partnerships and Political Commitment to Delay Early Marriage and the Onset of Childbearing in Northern Nigeria is implemented by a consortium of 4 civil society partners with funding from the Ford Foundation West Africa office. The project is being coordinated by ActionAid Nigeria based in Abuja, Nigeria and implemented in 2 States (Kano and Kaduna) of Nigeria. The consortium seeks to address the need for greater coordination and systematic evaluation of efforts to end child marriage though legislative/stakeholder advocacy and capacity building. The consortium will also work for domestication and enactment of protocols on the rights of the child (such as the Child Rights Law) and the improved implementation of the Children and Young Persons Law, as proposed in the report. This project will be implemented in the states of Kaduna and Kano, where the major consortium partners are located. The coalition partners are based in Kano and Northern Kaduna but will reach out to organizations from Sokoto and Jigawa during the first year of the grant. Northern rather than southern Kaduna was chosen because of the greater severity of child marriage in the northern LGAs. These two states were selected because of the progressive nature of the government in power to facilitate girls’ education.
2: PROJECT GOAL AND OBJECTIVES
The goal of this project is to delay child marriage by reducing social and economic barriers to girls’ education. The specific objectives of the project are as follows:
i) Establish a strong and effective consortium of civil society organizations working to delay marriage in the Northwestern states of Kaduna and Kano
ii) Increase awareness among key stakeholders of the adverse social and reproductive health consequences of child marriage and to build political commitment (within two years) for concrete measures for its reduction
iii) Pilot government‐civil society partnerships to scale‐up best practices in reducing child marriage in the two states
3: Implementation strategy
The consortium will address the problem of child marriage on the three levels:
1. Law and rights—e.g., advocacy for the domestication and adoption of the Child Rights Law, the implementation of the Children and Young Persons Law, and the elimination of the hidden costs of secondary education
2. Policy and institutional frameworks—e.g., supporting efforts to implement the new WAEC Senior Secondary School curriculum (which offers secondary school aged girls a range of 34 vocational and technical subjects to choose from in developing a career)
3. Programs, projects and actions—e.g., piloting government‐civil society partnerships to scale‐up best practices in reducing child marriage in the two states.
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