GUSO Learning

Adapting learning from the GUSO programme (2016-2020)  

By Heidy Araque

The youth empowerment programme called GUSO (Get Up Speak Out for Youth Rights!), which started in 2016, has now ended. Implemented by in-country alliances including IPPF MAs, GUSO worked with more than 50 partners in seven countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan and Uganda.   

GUSO has been hugely successful. The MAs provided over 2.5M direct services to people aged 10-25, they reached 132,050 young people with CSE and reached nearly 10M people with campaigns on youth SRHR.  

To display their work, the GUSO team have developed an exhibition. It is well worth the visit.  

Apart from the direct programme outcomes, GUSO has been a rich source of learning which will continue to inform our youth work in the future.  

The IPPF GUSO team has recently published a suite of resources to inform and facilitate our future youth work. This includes  

• Priorities for research on the effectiveness peer education (based on this 2020 study)  
• Activity guide for people aged 10-14 

• Guide on youth-led social accountability, 
• Guide for MAs to Support Parent-Child Communication on Sexuality (coming soon) 
• A toolkit to improve Youth Friendly services through peer coaching among service providers (coming soon)

GUSO have also held a series of webinars on a variety of topics, including: 

• Peer education 

• CSE via WhatsApp 
• CSE assessment 
• Engaging parents on CSE (copy the access passcode: k7QUt=e=) 

Apart from the GUSO materials, the many partners have also developed their resources which you can access here.  

We recommend:  

• facilitator’s guide on dealing with the opposition (and research),  
• toolkit on Gender Transformative Approach  
• report on the impact of COVID on youth SRH,  
• guide on social accountability  

• recommendations on using a Multi-Component Systems Approach to ASRHR.