Thee Lagos State Accountability Mechanism (LASAM), has trained government officials, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the media on Gender Transformative Advocacy (GTA) as efforts to reduce gender inequality in accessing Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) services in the state.
The Advisor for Options- Evidence For Action (E4A) Mama Ye Programme in Lagos State, Adenike Badiora, at a 2-day workshop organised by Options- E4A with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Lagos, said a growing body of evidence makes it clear that achieving sustained and meaningful improvements in RMNCAH requires addressing gender and social norms.
Badiora said the essence of the workshop was to build LASAM capacity to understand what are the root causes, identify them and critically look at the work that will be done to address them.
“The aim of the Gender Transformative Advocacy is to reduce the inequalities in accessing RMNCAH services in Lagos state and if possible eliminate the inequalities, by coming up with solutions and identifying specific stakeholders who can champion the process of bringing this transformative change within the communities,” Badiora explained.
“The recommendations that will come out from this workshop in terms of the Gender Transformative Advocacy messages will be used by LASAM in generating evidence and will help the Knowledge Management & Communications subcommittee of LASAM to write objective stories with the evidences that they have seen from their analysis that has been done on gender issues as it relates to RMNCAH in Lagos state.
“They will be able to use the information and the messages in their call to actions by writing objective stories as well as write stories that can call for public action and specific stakeholders to also take actions that will address these deep- rooted gender norms that affect RMNCAH services in the state. We believe that their evidence-based stories will spur stakeholders to take actions,” she averred.
