Over 3,000 young boys and girls benefit from UNICEF-supported wellbeing and empowerment programmes

Young boys and girls across five provinces in Iran are benefiting from the two pilot programmes, namely the boys’ Adolescents and Youth Empowerment  and the girls’ Adolescents Psycho-Social Wellbeing and Empowerment  Programmes.  Two centres are established in collaboration with the Ministry of Sports and Youth, the Drug Control Headquarters and UNICEF Iran.

Three of these UNICEF-supported empowerment centres for boys and girls, located in Kermanshah, Alborz and Isfahan, provide young boys aged 15 to 24, with soft and technical skills. On the job training, internships, mentoring, psychosocial support, counselling, and social entrepreneurship programmes. The focus of this programme is to facilitate a smooth transition from learning to earning, empowering 1,618 adolescents and youth in these provinces. In the next step, the programme will expand to include Sistan and Baluchistan, South Khorasan, Razavi Khorasan, Kerman, and Hormozgan provinces, some of which have a significant number of Afghan refugee children and adolescents.

Simultaneously, the UNICEF-supported Psychosocial Wellbeing and Empowerment Centres for girls, located in Mashhad and Kermanshah, have been instrumental in addressing the psychosocial challenges faced by vulnerable adolescent girls. These centres are dedicated to preventing substance use and mitigating social harm among young girls. Through a holistic approach encompassing in-person and online outreach and referral services, 2,023 adolescent girls and their families, including 1,720 girls and 303 caregivers and parents, have received invaluable support. Following the evaluation of this programme's outcomes and the enhancement of non-governmental organisations' capacity, this programme will be scaled up to include more provinces with high illicit drug use prevalence.