Apelu Sports will take their International Women’s Day celebrations to Asaga, Savai'i this week as part of their advocacy work to end violence against women and girls.

This will be their first time taking a program to Savai'i, having only been active on the Island of Upolu. To be able to take their program to the big island is a giant step spreading their work and reaching out to the youth on the big island. 

Program and Athlete Development and Leadership Officer for Apelu Sports, Anasis Saipele said that the project called Embodiment Family Life Education (FLE) is a comprehensive sexuality education program in an out of school setting for out of school youths. 

“FLE addresses the different ways that gender norms can influence inequality and how they can affect the overall health and wellbeing of children and young people, while also impacting the efforts to prevent issues such as HIV, STIs, Gender based violence and unwanted pregnancies.” 

Upolu has received most of the attention over the years in regards to holding EVAWG programs and gender equality workshops. 

However, Apelu Sports believe that the Island of Savai'i should also receive the same attention and opportunity as Upolu.

“It will be based on gender equality and on a human rights approach that builds on and promotes the understanding of universal human rights of children and young people to health, education, equality and nondiscrimination,” said Ms. Saipele. 

”We were inspired to implement this because we are strong advocates of advancing gender justice. We want a generation of youth that are healthy and know their values as a person so that they can make good decisions for themselves and their families. 

"This is so that we can strengthen and ensure that no one is left behind.”

A lot of the out of school adolescents are most often part of the local sports club and part of the responsibility of the sport sector is to  ensure the accessibility to quality programs.

“We strive to advance gender justice on and off the sports field because we speak from an athlete’s point of view and from experience.”

By using sportsmanship values like respect, support and ‘aiga’ meaning family and teamwork, they want to create champions from young school leavers to demonstrate in an understanding and respectful social relations. And have reliable knowledge on the use of family planning methods and understanding of their bodily functions. These are some of the impacts they hope to achieve with this project.