Overview

The Students and Youth Working on reproductive Health Action Team (SAYWHAT) is a student and youth social movement birthed in 2003 with the express ambition to contribute to the existence of healthy and empowered students and youth in institutions of higher learning in Zimbabwe who thoroughly enjoy their sexual and reproductive health rights. Since its inception, the SAYWHAT movement has pursued its mission through demand for student-friendly SRH information and education and gender-sensitive programming. The movement’s work has been primarily led and driven by student structures in tertiary institutions and young people trained and supported as community activists and cadres in communities. The SAYWHAT movement has evolved over the years and has expanded its scope of work beyond SRHR to embrace public health, education and child safeguarding programming. It has also spread its tentacles beyond the borders of Zimbabwe into the Southern African region, where it has established strong collaborations and networks under the Southern African Students and Youth Consortium (SARSYC). The movement aspires to become a sub-regional and pan-African movement with continental coverage by 2050. SAYWHAT was initially registered as a Trust in 2007 and then upgraded its registration into becoming a Private Voluntary Organisation in 2017 under the PVO Act of Zimbabwe [Chapter 17: 05] (34/2017).