WORLD Vision Tanzania has called in religious leaders to support youth development by empowering them with essential life skills to enable them become active citizens with competencies, values, confidence and patriotism.

Joseph Mayala, associate director in charge of public engagement, faith and development at World Vision Tanzania, said that religious leaders have immense power to trigger positive change in the society.

“We all need to cooperate to ensure that our adolescents grow well and have essential skills to seize opportunities around them. Moral decay is rapidly increasing and is associated with violent acts; all these need coordinated efforts from stakeholders, including religious leaders,” he said.

Speaking at a special meeting with religious leaders in Dar es Salaam yesterday, Mayala said clerics have a big role to play in monitoring morals of young people in the society.

The meeting was part of  implementation of the Accelerated Hope and Development for Urban Adolescents in Tanzania (AHADI) project,  a seven-year gender-transformative World Vision project that aligns with a framework to prevent gender-based violence by working towards changing harmful social and gender norms that perpetuate gender inequality in urban areas of Tanzania. 

Funded by Global Affairs Canada, the project supports adolescent girls and boys in and out of school to end violence, promote positive masculinities and gender equality.

He said the project uses evidence-based models to create a multiplier effect through a peer-to-peer education and behaviour approach in Dodoma and Dar es Salaam regions by raising awareness on issues of sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) among others.

He said through the project, adolescent girls and boys are trained on SRHR for them to make informed decisions.

“The initiative provides a gender transformative, rights-based approach to scaling up prevention of violence against women and girls and fulfilment of their sexual and reproductive health, dignity, security, and autonomy,” he said.

 Rev Amos Mlagwa of the Africa Inland Church Tanzania (AICT) said that fighting moral decay and gender-based violence requires concerted efforts from different stakeholders.

 He commended World Vision for implementing the project which he said has greatly helped promote understanding and behaviour change around harmful gender norms.

 Sheikh Othman Zubeir, secretary of youth wing at the National Muslim Council of Tanzania, said provision of sexual and reproductive health education is important as it helps young people understand themselves and make informed decisions throughout their life.