Reproductive health education to teenage girls and boys remains one of the greatest challenges in Swaziland. Being a society with strong cultural and historical back ground, discussions around sex between adults and young people remains a taboo both from cultural and political perspectives. In schools such topics can only be discussed after within a particular framework closely watched by the authorities. Compassionate empowers vulnerable teenage girls with information on reproductive health, sexual abstinence, secondary abstinence/virginity and sexual debut as strategic ways to prevent STIs, HIV and teenage pregnancy. Compassionate identifies vulnerable girls who have dropped out of school due to pregnancy and provide them with counselling services before enrolling them in private schools to continue with their education. The identification is done through model mothers who live in the villages and are trained specifically to offer psychosocial support to vulnerable children in their areas.
Most of HIV prevention information is directed to adults with minimal attention given to children and in particular vulnerable children. This leaves poor children highly vulnerable as they are not able to make informed choices when they become sexually active. Compassionate Swaziland aims at bridging this gap by providing child friendly sexual and reproductive health rights information for children and in particular adolescents to help them make informed choices before they engage in sex. The organization also works towards building the capacity of teenagers to develop assertiveness in decision making as relates to sexual behaviour. |
