My Health My Rights is a transformative campaign whose mission is to create a global alliance of active citizens and communities by building the capacity of partner organizations and coaches around the globe in advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) within their communities. In the last three years, this campaign has grown very fast, forming a global movement that aims at changing lives by uniting organizations and individuals across countries.
We started this campaign in 2022 with 12 organizations and now 25 of our partner organizations have integrated this campaign into their organizations. The community grows stronger every year, embracing more diversity, and getting better placed to stand up for women’s rights globally.
While I am talking about organizations that have been part of the campaign since 2022, I also would like to highlight the cohort of coaches and Community Impact Coaches (CICs) who have become active citizens to talk about women’s rights and gender-based violence. 1000+ coaches are now creating safe spaces to talk about SRHR. By focusing on the Accreditation pathway, many of our CIC’s are our local leaders who lead the campaign in their organizations, train coaches, and lead on-field training with us.
Initially, we developed one curriculum focusing on SRHR and GBV prevention, and this year we developed a curriculum focusing on Menstrual Health Management. The curriculum is based on self-directed learning using play, can be adopted with any sports/games and can be localized as per the partner organizations’ needs. We empower coaches to not just deliver the campaign with young people but also to apply these learnings and awareness in their lives beforehand. We have many success stories where our CICs and Coaches have challenged the unsafe culture and norms to uplift their lives, and today they are more confident and aware about their rights and also about how to reach the right people and resources.
I feel that on-field training for coaches is one of the highlights of working at CAC, where we all come together from different parts of the world and learn together. We started this year’s training in Delhi, India, where 8 organizations’ coaches and CICs came together to prepare ourselves for this year. Kutumb, one of our Delhi partners, hosted this training where we could learn, laugh, share, and have fun.
Jagdish is a CIC who is leading the My Health My Rights Campaign in India.
CAC will continue to empower, support, and work with more community-based organizations from anywhere around the world, and we hope to reach places where the need is high but resources are lacking. Looking ahead, we aim to integrate the My Health My Rights campaign with most of our partner organizations. We strive to equip coaches and advocates with the tools and knowledge they need to drive positive change in their communities.
If you want to learn more about the campaign, reach out to Saraswati at saraswati@coachesacrosscontinents.org
