PLA Notes 37 February 2000 9 Lessons from Auntie Stella': using PRA to promote reproductive health education in Zimbabwe's secondary schools

Document begins: PLA Notes 37 February 2000 9 Lessons from `Auntie Stella': using PRA to promote reproductive health education in Zimbabwe's secondary schools Barbara Kaim and Ratidzai Ndlovu are subject to strong social, economic and peer Introduction pressure in many areas, they lack sources of open, reliable support and information. For In early 1997 the Adolescent Reproductive example, girls from one remote rural school Health Education Project (ARHEP), a project show how community and government of a Zimbabwean non-profit organisation institutions, and even the Guidance and Counselling teachers who are mandated to called the Training and Research Support provide AIDS education for 40 minutes per Centre (TARSC), set out to find out what week, are not prominent (see Figure 1). information, perceptions and concerns adolescents have about their reproductive Instead, adolescents repeatedly said that they health and their sources of information and were either getting information from family support. Drawing on our collective members (but not parents, who are experiences and understanding of participatory conspicuously absent in the sexual education of their children), peers (although much of the approaches, we aimed to prioritise the views of information shared is superficial and the adolescents themselves. We focused our inaccurate) and the ...