Midvaal Municipality:Reproductive Health- Youth

The project started as a programme that will be focusing on key population that is young people attending school in semi-rural communities within the Midvaal Municipality. Focus is on reproductive health and education and reproductive rights to young pupils in primary schools. One school to be visited so that an awareness can take place. Then sanitary towels will then be distributed to each learner and some will be left at the school for emergency. This is to prevent learners from being absent from school due to lack of sanitary towels. Second is to address

Context        

The main problem is regards to pupils being absent from school when they are on their periods. Thus, the gap needed to be bridging by providing sanitary towels to learners that whose parents or caregivers do not have the means to provide sanitary towels for them. The second reason is high rate of teenage pregnancy in the high schools. Thus, a need for awareness on sexual reproductive health and teenage pregnancy is a needed in high schools as the curriculum only covers a certain portion that is presented by educators and they are not specialist in health promotion or being a health practitioner. As Social Development within the Municipality were had a partnership with Fire department and Rand Water. As a partnership, we collected data on how many schools are within Midvaal and did a short analysis of what they are the pupil’s psychosocial needs. Toiletries and Sanitary towels are amongst the greatest needs that the pupils have

Key Actions

As a collective, we schedule awareness campaigns where Health Promotion (Department of Health) plays a very crucial part of the awareness. The health promoters would have presentations an sexual hygiene. Explaining the according to the different sexes. It is important to cover both male and female at the same time so that they know and understand how the different sexual organs function. Then there would be a question and answer session, where the pupils are free to ask questions and clear any uncertainties and myths. Health promoters then answer the questions.

Partners

The local government and other government departments (Health, Education, SASSA) and NGO’s within the Municipality that are working with people living with and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. The Municipality has a civil society forum that comprises of eight sectors namely; older persons, disability, LGBTI, Religion, Sex workers, NGO’s, Children, and PLHIV. Quarterly we have a meeting then we plan which awareness campaigns we can have to address the challenges that the Community of Midvaal is facing concerning HIV/AIDS and anything related as it is a multi-faceted illness.

Strategies

The strategy that we use is coalition building as we try to have public private partnerships and interdepartmental partnerships to try to reach as may adolescents and youth as possible.

Challenges

The main challenge is funding for sanitary towels and transport. At times there isn’t enough sanitary towels to give each learner an entire pack however the towels will be left at the school so that the pupil can access it at school. The Municipality has made provision that the stakeholders to be transported by municipal transport thus for each campaign transport is made available.

Immediate results and next steps

More than 450 beneficiaries have been reached. The forum meets on a quarterly basis to have a collective approach to the problem as dynamics change each quarter. We try to maintain public private partnerships. The involvement of NGO is as they receive funding form the different departments, (eg. Department of Social Development and Health). Thus as a forum we are able to collaborate and draw resources together. This also ensures that there is no duplication of services within a short period.

Long term Impact

The programme seeks to assist the adolescent, as they are the most vulnerable to risk associated with sexual activity. This will assist them to make informed decisions concerning their sexual orientation and sexual activity. Thus lesser absenteeism due to lack of sanitary towels, secondly fewer school dropouts due to teenage pregnancy.

Learning and Application

There is not a generalist approach to creating awareness for young people. They constantly need to be entertained thus, the way we deliver the message to them need to evolve. Thus we have incorporated Midvaal Arts to be p[art of our team so that a more interesting way of presenting that can capture the concentration of the adolescent , the health promoters will then ask and answer questions on what the learners saw in the plays and clarify any questions.