Youth. Lots of ideas. Dreams. Plenty of intentions. Promises. Bounteous energy. While all this is going on, the door remains locked on the access to high-quality family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights services and information for all youth.
This is where the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning (IYAFP) comes in. With a recent announcement of the 2018-2019 cohort of country coordinators, Keketso Nthethe is the Coordinator of the IYAFP chapter in Lesotho.
Out of more than 600 applications, Keketso Nthethe forms part of a group of 81 IYAFP country coordinators around the world. These youth have worked to drive immense progress within their communities on the issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence, female genital cutting, maternal health, amongst others.
Although he graduated at NUL with a degree in Computer Systems, he’s been passionate and dedicated to innovative youth empowerment and community development. With regard to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and family planning, his main interests are STIs and HIV &AIDS as they are prevalent amongst youth in Lesotho.
“For most youth, these issues are coupled with unsafe abortion and unattended teenage pregnancy,” Keketso emphasizes. He is tasked to lead youth in Lesotho to improve access to quality information and services related to Family Planning.
Through his in-country team, Keketso hopes that IYAFP can reach as many Basotho as possible through comprehensive sexuality education and access to information through the youth to achieve the goal of an HIV free generation that is able to make proper decisions when it comes to SRHR.
In addition to joining a global family of youth advocates for SRHR, Keketso will represent youth on higher decision making levels and activities related to policy advocacy, community development projects, research, and educational workshops.
Keketso says he’s grateful on being afforded an opportunity to be on the fore-front in addressing some of the issues facing youth in Lesotho. “I feel honoured. I hope we will work towards a better future for youth.”
IYAFP is committed to helping youth around the world create a better future. It achieves this by empowering young people to become global advocates with the skills, knowledge and resources needed to scale up youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health initiatives and services while putting permanent processes in place to ensure continued youth involvement in decision making related to SRHR interventions to ultimately empower girls, youth, and women economically, financially, and socially.
Membership applications of 15-30 years youth will open sometime in April 2018 on www.iyafp.org