Education and Empowerment: Moving from Information to Action
The benefits of education are well known: Education is the key to improved livelihoods, healthcare, nutrition and the exercise of civil and political rights. Education that includes engages young people in discussions about sexuality, reproduction, relationships and gender issues can promote healthier behaviour, foster a demand for services and promote gender equality.
Ideally, education includes both primary and secondary school. At their best, schools can be safe spaces where young people can forge identities, clarify values and develop critical thinking skills, while also learning to exercise their rights. Equal treatment of boys and girls in the classroom should be emphasized, as such experiences will empower girls to stay in school and give them a model of gender equity in action. Boys need support in the construction of positive masculine models, with an emphasis on conflict resolution and respect for the rights of women and girls, including their reproductive rights.
But education begins before and goes beyond schooling. A new paradigm of ‘life-long learning’ emphasizes the transformative synergies that can occur between school, family, community and cultural experiences. It encompasses the acquisition of relevant capacities – the knowledge, marketable skills, social capital and values that enable individuals to function effectively in a range of adult roles, including worker, household provider, parent, spouse, family caretaker, citizen and community participant.
A life skills approach for better health outcomes, including sexual and reproductive health, was endorsed by several UN agencies (WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNESCO) in 2003. Broadly, this encompasses social skills, thinking skills and negotiation skills.
UNFPA promotes a life skills approach through working with ministries of education on teacher sensitization and training and curriculum development. The life-skills approach employs participatory and interactive methodologies, including role-playing and other theatre techniques, exploration of feelings, analysis of gender stereotyping, training in negotiation skills, and question and answer sessions. The idea is not just to impart information, but to foster critical thinking, problem-solving and interpersonal communications skills that can lead to informed, responsible and voluntary decisions. A life skills-based curriculum can enable young people to challenge harmful gender norms, resist peer pressure and critically assess mass media stereotypes. The aim is to help them navigate a safe passage to adulthood.
The life-skills approach, with its emphasis on communication and decision-making, can be applied to many subjects, but it can be especially appropriate in the sensitive arena of sexual and reproductive health, where it might include the following topics:
- The concept of holistic health
- Understanding the reproductive system
- Nutrition
- Personal hygiene
- Benefits of postponing early marriage and pregnancy
- Having children by choice and not chance: contraceptive methods (including emergency contraception)
- Sexuality, and safe, informed sexual behaviour
- Prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections
- Care and support for people living with HIV
- Addressing sexual harassment and violence
- Avoiding maternal morbidity and mortality
- Substance abuse
UNFPA advocates for and supports age-appropriate, gender-sensitive education that helps young people understand sexual changes as positive and natural aspects of their development. When young people are equipped with accurate and relevant information and education, when they have developed skills in decision-making and communication and have access to counselling and services that are non-judgmental and affordable, they are better able to
- Take advantage of educational and other opportunities that will affect their lifelong well-being
- Avoid unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion
- Protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.
- Improve their reproductive and sexual health, self-esteem and social participation
The Fund provides programming guidance on gender-sensitive sexual and reproductive health education both in schools and in other settings, and advocates for wider educational opportunities for all young people. In addition to working with ministries of education on curriculum development and teacher training and supporting educational policies for youth, UNFPA works through strategic partnerships such as Education for All, the UN Girl’s Education Initiative, the launch of the Literacy Decade, and EDUCAIDS, the Global Initiative on Preventive Education on HIV/AIDS.
As globalization reaches communities across the world, the identities of youth in both developed and developing countries are increasingly shaped by – and expressed through – popular culture. This may be communicated in many forms: traditional to emerging media, music, dance, storytelling, television, radio, comic books, fashion, art, computer games and weblogs, among others.
Mass media and various genres of pop culture can be powerful and cost-effective communications channels for imparting knowledge to young people and socializing them to particular aspirations, values and attitudes. Though wide disparities in access exists between rich and poor, males and females, and urban and rural youth, smart and strategic use of different media can overcome barriers to reaching most marginalized populations.
Public health professionals are increasingly cultivating the power of entertainment and mass media to promote health messages, invite people to think about consequences of various behaviors, make decisions, and link them with service providers. Researchers have developed a strong body of evidence linking strategic use entertainment education in developing countries with increased knowledge, changed attitudes and altered behaviors, including delay of sexual onset, increased use of condoms and healthcare, services and a reduction in domestic violence.
UNFPA recognizes that mass media and popular culture are key channels for affecting change on a large scale, and it has worked to help shape messages that reach millions of young people. For instance, in a partnership with the MTV, the Fund helped ensure that the content of its Staying Alive campaign was accurate and gender-sensitive. The UNFPA also supports the development of television and radio serial dramas that intertwine health and behaviour change messages into compelling storylines.
Peer education has become one of the most common approaches to addressing adolescent sexual and reproductive health in recent years. It is based on the premise that young people are more inclined to discuss sexual behaviour and other sensitive subjects with their peers than with parents or other adults. Formalizing and focusing these conversations on reducing risks can empower youths to protect themselves.
While young people often have considerable energy and enthusiasm for peer education, effectiveness depends upon careful training, support, materials, monitoring and feedback mechanisms. The UNFPA-piloted, rapidly expanding Y-PEER (Youth Peer Education Network) offers trainings, manuals, a website and other resources to bring standards of excellence to and share knowledge among hundreds of different peer education projects in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, many of the Arab States, and some African countries. Its detailed, five-volume peer education toolkit has been translated into 14 languages and adapted to address the cultural sensitivities found in various regions.
Targeted peer education can also be raise awareness and disseminate information among hard-to-reach or marginalized populations. It has been used effectively, for instance, to reach out to young sex workers, ethnic minorities, street youth, and other groups of young people who are not in the classroom.
When an innovative project in rural Cambodia found that the peer education model was not getting results, it added paid outreach staff, who were a little older and better trained, and gave the volunteer peer educators more modest, supporting roles.
Peer education is a key strategy of an joint UNFPA and EU-supported project that targets some 3 million young people (aged 15 to 24) in the South Caucasus who have little or no access to sexual and reproductive health information, services and counselling.
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