To celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child (October 11), we are inviting you to join the GBV AoR Community of Practice and special guests the Whole of Syria GBV AoR for a week dedicated to learning and discussing GBV and Adolescent Girls.

In 2017, the Syria Humanitarian Needs Overview identified adolescent Syrian girls as particularly vulnerable to child marriage and sexual violence and completely overlooked and ignored in the humanitarian response. Based on these findings and consultations held with GBV and SRH actors and with adolescent girls themselves, the Whole of Syria GBV Area of Responsibility and the Reproductive Health working group agreed to develop a strategy that would address the specific needs of adolescent girls in Syria, focusing on reproductive health and gender based violence.

During the week of October 11, the Whole of Syria GBV AoR will share their experience with Community of Practice members including their lessons learned and key resources from their Adolescent Girl Strategy. They will tell us how they assessed the needs of adolescent girls, the specific and innovative programmatic initiatives that they developed, and how they involved adolescent girls in the telling of their stories. CoP members will receive key resources each day and be invited to join a discussion and share relevant material on how to focus GBV country strategies on the needs of vulnerable adolescent girls.

This week is an opportunity for the COP to reflect, share, learn and discuss how to improve the quality of adolescent girl focused GBV programs to see how we can be guided in supporting these girls by listening to what they tell us.  Activities during this week will include webinars, community discussions, and collections of materials alongside access to the different GBV specialists who contributed to this achievement.