Chill Club - Educating Young People About Reproductive And Sexual Health

Alena recently visited our library in Koguta. The community is very active and is using the resources from library very seriously. One project they want to start has however caught Alena's attention.

Peter, the son of Madam Tina who is the well respected woman in the Koguta community, is going in his father's footsteps. His father aimed at educating the local community. He himself left the community when young to go and study to big city, where he spent most of his life teaching at a school. When he was getting old he decided to put all his savings into building a college in his community. Unfortunately, the died before the college was completed and the building was left unfinished. After few years we came to the scene with an idea of rebuilding and reconstructing the building into on of our libraries.

The library is now, 3 years later, well known in the community and has number of activities that were created as a result of it. One if the football club, which has four age groups and which trains weekly (the eldest group daily). All the members are also members of our football club.

After we managed to bring electricity to the community, we also provided them with few laptops, which are now used mainly to watch movies and documentaries and to write minutes and reports of the activities. It is also used to manage the library.

This time, Peter came with an idea that he read about in one of the books at the library - Chill Club. This club would be about creating easy and simple curriculum (following the book in the library and using other books as a resource) and going around local school and teach the youth and kids about basic hygiene, gender violence and violence against women, reproductive health (especially teen pregnancy), sexual health and STDs.

We are now looking for volunteers who can either come to the community and help us establish this or even volunteers who are willing to help out from their homes by researching and helping to create easily understandable material that we can use for the workshops.

The plan is to go to the school on a weekly bases for an hour lesson, having four groups (kids and youth each divided further into girls and boys). Once a month there would be a bigger event, during which the schools would meet in the hall and discuss what they have learnt and ask any questions they might have.

We think it is a great idea! Mainly because all the young people involved are willing to be our local volunteers for free - with the aim to educate their community! Now we only need to help them with the material and possibly more training. As the volunteers themselves have still many questions regarding this issues.

What do you say, are you in this with us?