We recently opened a maternal and newborn health (MNH) knowledge contest to our youths in tertiary institutions in Ondo State. The schools involved are Federal University of Technology (FUTA) Akure, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic (RUGIPO) Owo, Adeyemi College of Education (ACE) Ondo and All States College of Education, Ero.Late 2014, MamaYe engaged the youths on their campuses in order to share knowledge about maternal and newborn health (MNH) with them. The youths are very important to the MamaYe campaign, as some of them have entered into adulthood and have even started raising families, but they do not have adequate knowledge about the health needs of a pregnant woman or a newborn.Sharing knowledge about MNH with the youths is quite important as they face dangers of unsafe practices and beliefs, unsafe health care facilities, and inadequate government provisions to the health sector. We also want them to be able to take actions that will lead to improving these situations.In order to keep engaging the youths and to keep improving their MNH knowledge, we designed the MamaYe Youth Maternal and Newborn Health Knowledge Contest.Every week, we post a question to test the knowledge of the youths. A round of contest is made up of 4 questions, 1 per week, all 4 to be answered correctly and the fastest person to answer them correctly is the winner. We measure the fastest using the time stamp on their entries. Where there is a tie, we post a supplementary question to get a winner.We are taking advantage of social media to reach the youths. They are mainly active on Whatsapp, and the interaction has been fun. The platform is gradually transforming into an information hub, and a place to raise activists for MNH improvement.We are pleased to announce our first winner, Ibironke Tolulope. He recounted his experience on having to help a pregnant woman who fell into labour and was alone, to a hospital. He was proud of himself recounting this experience. This is one of the actions we want everybody to be taking.Tolulope is a student of RUGIPO. He is studying Mass Communication and he is currently in Higher National Diploma 1.Interestingly, the winner of the MamaYe essay competition during our campus campaign in 2014 was from RUGIPO, and the MamaYe State Coordinator in Ondo State is also a product of the school!We are encouraged that more activists will come from RUGIPO, while we are also hopeful that other activists will emerge from other schools as they get to know more about how important it is to take actions to ensure that pregnant women and newborns survive.
We are excited that our youths are now participating in the quest to reducing maternal and newborn health. This is like providing for the rainy day, when they must be able to make inform decisions on their reproductive health.