Akimbo » comprehensive sex ed

Positively Informed: Lesson Plans and Guidance for Sexuality Educators and Advocates

International Women's Health Coalition — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:53:23 +0000

A resource kit of lesson plans and guidance for comprehensive sexuality educators, Positively Informed provides a handpicked selection of some of the best English-language sexuality education materials out there. Intended to serve as a source of ideas, examples, and inspiration for educators developing their own sexuality education curricula, the lesson plans use creative, interactive, learner-centered teaching strategies, and are adaptable to diverse cultural settings. They address gender issues, challenge discriminatory attitudes and behaviors, and present sexuality as a positive part of life rather than something to be feared and shrouded in taboos. These lessons are appropriate for 10- to 19-year-olds and are classroom ready. Depending on the cultural context, level of community support, and students’ level of knowledge and experience, some may need considerable adaptation to be relevant and effective. Listed at the end of the book are references to additional recommended lesson plans.

The guide is 196 pages long, so we’ve broken up the PDF into chapters so you can grab the stuff you’re most interested in.

Originally published here in IWHC’s resource library. Learn more about our work on Youth Health and Rights here.

Empowering Youth Means Freeing Sex Ed Information

Audacia Ray — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:53:40 +0000

The YP Foundation, based in Delhi, India, is an ever-growing organization that, through many projects, works on the issues including Gender, Identity, Sexuality, HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse and Life Skills. Ishita Chaudhry, who is the founder of IWHC partner the YP Foundation in Delhi, India, has a long blog post up in which she struggles with the question: Why is sexuality so problematic?

Here’s and excerpt (but seriously, it’s worth a click-through to read the whole thing):

Now, more than ever, governments as well as central education systems and institutions need to endorse to 225 million young people in the age group of 10-19 years i.e., 22 % of the total population that Sexuality Education is about young people’s right to know. The arguments based on cohesive Sexuality Education being against our cultural and moral values are invalid and do not justify denying young people the information and skills they need and are entitled to.

As young people, we have learnt that comprehensive sexuality education does not ‘corrupt young minds’ or as WHO studies have shown, does not lead to an increase in early sexual activity but that a lack of information leads young people to access false, incomplete and harmful facts and puts them in high risk situations.

Why are young people considered to have a high rate of self harm? The perception that adolescents confront problems because of ‘their inability to properly manage the sudden development of their interest in the opposite sex’, stems from a position in society where adolescents are brought up by adults to believe that sexuality is a silent space and that it is not to be talked about, accepted or respected. Given the right information and skills and trusted, young people can negotiate high-risk situations more effectively and reduce their vulnerability to violence, HIV and substance abuse.

In a country where 11 million abortions take place annually and around 20,000 women die due to abortion related complications, where 1 and 10 percent of abortion-seekers in India are adolescents, where there is a huge unmet need for contraception and where Child Marriages are still rampant, the need to empower young women and girls is critical.

To not do that, because we are tentative, unsure and scared of what others may say and think, is inexcusable.

Also worth a read: the text of Ishita’s remarks made for a United States Congressional Briefing, Global Youth: A Strategic Investment on March 3, 2009. Download as a PDF here, or read it as a series of blog posts.

Reproductive anatomy diagrams in Cameroun and Brazil

Audacia Ray — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:58:15 +0000

Teaching anatomy is one of the most fundamental pieces of comprehensive sexuality education. The naming of the parts begins pretty much as soon as a child starts to be aware of his or her body and wants to know “what’s this?” as she points to different body parts. This of course isn’t necessarily about genitals – but it shouldn’t exclude genitals either.

Here are two pictures of anatomy diagrams from two very different IWHC partners. I find it fascinating to see the different ways anatomy is represented in illustrations – which parts are named, which are not, what the vantage point is. Maybe I read too much into these things. If you don’t want to get geeky about representation – you can at least check out the French and Portuguese words for fallopian tube: tube and trompa, respectively.

Staff members of the Association de Lutte contre les Violences faites aux Femmes (ALVF – Association for the Struggle Against Violence Against Women) hold up French-language reproductive health diagrams. ALVF began in Yaoundé, Cameroun, but in just over a decade, ALVF has grown from a single office that provided a safe space for women survivors of violence to a national group that manages outreach centers for women in three different regions of the country.

Grupo Curumim’s youth program, Cunhatã, which IWHC has funded since its inception in 2001, is designed to respond to adolescents’ need for information and education on sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights. Cunhatã organizes workshops that provide youth with comprehensive and accurate information about their health and rights in order to inform and empower young people to reach adulthood in good health.

Check out more pictures of our partners and their programs on our Flickr photostream.