Kolda is heating up

We are finishing up our second week in Kolda here and things are starting to heat up, both methodologically and meteorologically! We arrived pleasantly cooled-down after our time in Tamba. It rains every few days in Kolda which tends to keep us rather cool, but today is rather hot.

My binome Oulèye and I are moving along well with our research and are eager to start the next (and most exciting!) phase of the IFP: data analysis. We will conclude our surveys of youth this week. After all is said and done we will have spoken with 70 youth, either through focus groups or individual interviews, in Mbour, Tambacounda and Kolda. We are starting to notice some definite trends with regard to gaps in the CCA's strategies to raise awareness amongst out-of-school youth, most notably the so-called advanced strategies, which are events carried out in remote quartiers and villages, where behavior change is most critical to reducing early pregnancy and STI/HIV/AIDS infection rates. We've also noticed that many youth and community leaders say time and again that the responsibility for reducing the number of early marriages, early pregnancies, and early sexuality in general falls on the shoulders of their parents, yet there is no ostensible awareness-raising strategy for top-down behavior change at the head of household level. Early marriage rates in Tambacounda and Kolda are especially high, largely due to poverty, but also linked to certain socio-cultural tendencies in these communities. A concerted effort to increase dialogue with parents about alternatives to early marriage and early sexuality in general would likely yield dramatic changes.

We are excited to start analyzing our data in full to confirm whether these initial impressions hold true. Only time will tell!