Along the Road to Fort Portal
Welcome to Fort Portal
Four hours from Uganda’s capital, surrounded by lush rolling hills and mountains peaking over the horizon, you find Fort Portal – a town in the Kabarole District in southwestern Uganda.
Here, the majority of the population is young, under the age of 25.
The sounds and smells of Fort Portal envelop you. Charcoal smoke from roadside chapatis swirl with the gentle breeze and sweet aroma of morning tea.
The road swells and rumbles with morning commuters. Bicycles, boda boda motorbikes, buses and carts ruhing past.
It’s another busy market day and everyone is preparing their goods. Hawkers steer grazing goats or balance their cargo atop their head. This is Fort Portal - awake and buzzing for another day.
At the mobile money stand, young people queue to place a cheeky bet on tonight’s football match or topping up their mobile credit.
Schoolgirls and boys huddle together chatting and joking as they make their way along the dusty path to school.
When barriers to health services are addressed and information on safe sex is accessible, young people are more likely to fulfil their potential, finish their education, find employment and have a family when it is right for them.
Young people in Fort are flooded with misinformation and struggle to tell the difference between fact and fiction when it comes to safe sex information. A lack of accurate information is a major driver of risky sexual behaviour and poor reproductive health.
Despite the abundance of higher education in Fort, trusted and accurate SRHR information is hard to come by. Talking about sex with parents, teachers and elders can awkward.
Meet Fort Portal’s peer educators
Young people want trustworthy information that is accessible, high quality and provided free of judgement or coercion. Information that will help them make decisions for themselves. Peer educators provide a vital service and can talk to their peers about sex in an honest and understanding way.
Why Digital?
Digital tech presents new opportunities to improve young people’s access to SRHR information. In Uganda, many young people relying on digital tech to access information on sex, bodily autonomy and menstruation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people spent a record amount of time on their mobile phones or online. Yet, 56% young people we surveyed didn’t know what SRHR information to trust online. Many attempt to verify the information with trusted peers. Our Outreach Tablets are a digital platform for peer educators to provide and prompt discussion with trusted and medically verified SRHR information.