By Amina Evangelista Swanepoel | Project Leader and ROH Executive Director
Hello supporters!
Thank you once again for donating towards our important work in the Philippines.
Your generosity has allowed us to continue serving thousands of women and girls in Puerto Princesa City, and to train and support Community Health Advocates (CHAs) who are resources for women and girls within their communities.
One of the biggest challenges we face in the Philippines is an extremely high teen pregnancy rate. The national average is one in five pregnancies to teenage girls. In Palawan where we work, the rate is one in four. Young people do not have access to comprehensive, science-based reproductive health education and they do not have access to contraceptives. As a result, myths and misconceptions about sex and pregnancy abound, and when they have sex, they do it without protection. When girls get pregnant at age 14, 15 or 16, they usually drop out of high school and do not return. Thus their education is cut short and this severely limits their future employability, contributing to remaining mired in the cycle of poverty they grew up in.
Roots of Health provides sexual and reproductive health education in public high schools in Palawan, but this is not enough. Education must also come from parents. When we ran two focus group discussions with young people and with their mothers, we found that young people wanted to gain information and knowledge about sex from their parents. Their parents, however, did not feel equipped to teach their children, and they often said they wouldn’t know how to start these conversations.
To address this need, last month we conducted a training with our 52 Community Health Advocates on how to talk to their children about sex. We went over the basics of sexual health information, and coached the CHAs on communication tools that will facilitate better, more engaging conversations. The CHAs now not only have improved skills to use in initiating these conversations with their children, but they are also well positioned to teach other community members how to talk to their children.
Thanks to your support, we carried out this training successfully and within a few months there will be hundreds of young people who will have started talking with their mothers about sex. We believe this will help them to change their risky behavior and have healthier, safer futures.
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