A toolkit for anyone who wants to facilitate participatory learning activities with adolescents and young people to equip them with the knowledge, positive attitudes and skills to grow up and enjoy sexual and reproductive health and well-being.
The toolkit was initially developed with Frontline AIDS; Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia; Young, Happy, Healthy and Safe; Ministries of Health and Education, and peer educators and young people in rural Eastern Province, Zambia. The toolkit was tested by peer educators and revised based on their experience and the lessons learnt in monitoring.
The toolkit was further developed with Alliance Regional Youth Programme partners in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, and with the CORE Initiative in Uganda. In 2018, the toolkit was revised and updated by Linnea Renton (Lead Consultant) and Génesis Luigi (Consultant), who gratefully acknowledge the support and feedback of Frontline AIDS and of READY partners in seven countries in East and Southern Africa.
The toolkit includes peer educators and leaders, outreach workers, teachers, community workers and others. It aims to assist facilitators to:
- Provide accurate and complete factual information to adolescents and young people in a non-judgemental atmosphere
- Plan appropriate educational activities for groups of adolescents and young people that enable them to:
- Analyse their own situations, resources and needs
- Apply new knowledge to their own lives
- Increase awareness of their own values and attitudes
- Develop their self-esteem and confidence
- Develop life-skills, for example, communication and assertiveness skills, problem-solving and decision-making
- Build trust and take collective action
- Follow up and evaluate their work
Guide to using the toolkit
- Planning your sessions: The toolkit contains topic sessions with aims, key ideas and a number of different activities. You need to plan each session carefully before you start. If you are an experienced facilitator they also strongly encourage you to consider working with, and mentoring, a young person to help build their skills in working effectively with peers.
- Preparing for the session: Read the key ideas before you start a session to get them clear in your mind. Keep your toolkit with you in case you need to refer to it. Provide information as people need it throughout the session. Use the facts to answer questions, to help people understand an activity and to add to their knowledge after the activity. If an activity is new to you, try it out with a friend. If necessary, adapt the story or role-play to suit your group. If you are going to use a resource person, meet with her or him beforehand, go through the session and the key ideas, and agree on who will do what and how long it will take.
- What resources will you need? You and the young people that you work with are the best resources for learning. You can talk, discuss, debate, perform role-plays and practise new ways of saying things. All these methods help people to learn actively rather than just memorising facts.
You can download this toolkit for free here.
