In Rwanda, as in many developing African countries, young girls are often burdened with household duties such as cooking and caring for younger siblings which leads to their poor performance in schools. In extreme cases, such girls drop out of school due to unwanted pregnancy, failure in examinations, lack of self confidence and HIV/AIDS infection.
This project addresses gender, sexual health and HIV/AIDS by teaching young adults and empowers them to make positive decisions about their health.
Since the program has started, the prevalence of unwanted pregnancies has been decreased in target schools as witnessed by school leaders. Class performance of both genders has also improved. The number of girls dropping out of school has been reduced too.
The project has provided 16 workshops in eight years, where 1280 students have participated. Many topics have been covered in those workshops which enable the Gender Empowerment project to spread information about family planning, gender promotion and HIV/AIDS.
Aims
- To educate youth about sexual health, family planning and gender empowerment through two workshops per year.
- To consolidate and enhance young people’s awareness of sexual health at further teaching sessions in schools
The project
Workshops
The pyramid project will hold two workshops per year that are focussed on empowering and educating young adults in secondary school about gender equality, family planning and HIV/AIDS awareness. Students coming from anti-HIV/AIDS and gender clubs from their respective schools will be invited. This allows the content of RVCP’s workshops to be transmitted to more youth through peer education. The clubs plan performances, dance, songs and poetry readings to show in front of their schools.
Teaching sessions
Pyramid volunteers conducts teaching sessions in 31 target secondary schools. The volunteers also address questions the students may have on sexual education topics, from a medical perspective, such as circumcision which often are not addressed properly in traditional curriculums.