I haven’t written much about what i have actually achieved so far on my programme so thought i would write a post on this. Part of VSOs aim is to break the vicious circle of ill health that occurs in developing countries. Our programme is linked to this aim focusing on teaching youths about safe sexual reproductive health practices.
My placement at Mmabana works mainly with children on educational support meaning me and my counterpart at the start found it a struggle to think of how we can achieve our this aim. Therefore a lot of our work has been done through ourselves independently. At the start we sat down with our placement supervisor and arranged that we were going to hold facilitations at Mmabana to the youths every other week and that we will go to schools to teach the elder students on SRH. Mmabana also does football and netball for the youths that attend the free computer course and the youth club meaning we have been getting involved with condom distributions every week to the teams.
Work at Mmabana
The work we have been doing at Mmabana on sexual reproductive health has been predominantly through condom distributions and a few sessions at the youth club. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we usually go to Mwagalli grounds. Here we speak to football teams about safe sex, the correct use and storage of condoms, reasons why we use them and other SRH related issues. We then open the floor for any questions they have.
I really enjoy this as you can often speak to the youths one to one and have a productive conversation with them on SRH. They often have many questions that startle me as in my eyes the answer is simple but for them they have been drilled in to using condoms but very few have been told about the facts on contraception and how to use them correctly. So far me and my counterpart have successfully distributed over 2600 condoms.
One of our most productive condom distributions was during a football tournament at Mwagalli grounds where we distributed over 1700 condoms along with other volunteers on our team working for PPAZ and Railway clinic. Here we spoke to many youths and they had lots of questions which we could happily and confidently answer.
Other SRH work we have been involved with at Mmabana is holding our own SRH sessions to the youths. Due to youth club being on a Friday, this has clashed with our ACD and team meetings meaning we have only managed to run a couple of these facilitations. Nonetheless they have been very successful and the participants have gained important information on HIV and Sexually transmitted infections. The first session was on HIV. Here we covered basic aspects on the virus, no/low and high risk sexual activities that may lead you to contracting HIV and sexual networking. We did these all through interactive activities so that they stayed engaged and learned visually as well as kinaesthetically. Feedback from our placment supervisor was that it was very good and he liked our techniques of teaching. The youths were not bored as we included them and felt they had enjoyed and learnt from it.
The STI session was also a success. We covered the background information on STIs, examples of infections with photos, a quiz, question and answer session and other topics. The youth coordinator Emmanuel said he particularity enjoyed the causes, symptoms and effects game which involved participants putting pieces of information in different piles; causes of STIs, symptoms of STIs etc. I really enjoyed this sitting as they asked lots of questions indicating their engagement and with my knowledge on SRH i have gained whilst being here i could answer them correctly.
We will be holding another facilitation on substance abuse with the youth club again on Friday which i am looking forward to.
School sessions
I had the idea that delivering to schools would definitely be worthwhile.To get permission you have to go to DEBS (Department Education Board Secretary) where they will stamp and approve a letter which will allow you to teach in schools. Here in Zambia schools broke up for holidays at the beginning of August which has been a shame as we could have done a lot more sessions to the students had they still been at school. We managed to go to three schools in which we taught to grades 8 and 9 on Puberty and STIs. Working in the schools was often more challenging as there were a larger number of participants who were also slightly more misbehaving! Despite these challenges we got some important information across to them and they all seemed to enjoy the activities we organised for them.
Other facilitations
There have been other occasions where we have managed to outreach SRH. One of these has been through our CAD (community action day) where our team organised a sports day and promoted the issues of gender based violence. I held a session with the younger children which was great fun and managed to get some basic messages across to them.
Other sessions have been at Gerald Healey Day Care centre. This is a centre where orphaned children go after school each day to have fun, feel safe and receive therapy. The centre also pays for their school fees like Mmabana. We conducted three sessions to the youths there on contraception and STIs. These were some of my favourite youths to work with as they were so interested and keen to learn about the knowledge we were teaching them. Unfortunately they have finished for the holidays which means we cannot facilitate any more to them.
Summary
Overall i feel i have managed to outreach to a good number of youths and held a sound number of sessions. I am in the process of writing an SRH manual which i will be passing on to my placement where current and future volunteers at Mmabana can use. It will include all the information and sessions we have done so far here that they can use when facilitating and outreaching to the community.
My calculations have worked out that me and my counterpart at my placement have managed to distribute over 2600 condoms and outreached to over 550 youths!
