Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

Stop Aids Now! Planning & Support Tool

Evidence and Rights-based Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

STOP AIDS NOW! and Rutgers asked me to revise their Planning and Support Tool, which they had first published in 2009.

This involved a good deal of research, consultation and writing, to bring the document into line with the agencies’ changing approaches and to respond to users’ requests.

Download the 2016 PDF (2.2Mb).

Extract

This tool is designed to assist organisations that want to promote young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and to empower them to enjoy their (sexual) development, relationships, attain their rights and have a greater sense of wellbeing. It focuses mainly on the strategy of SRHR education, also known as (comprehensive) sexuality education.

To improve young people’s quality of life and (sexual) health we need effective programmes, but developing and implementing them is not easy. However, experience and evidence gained from work all over the world shows what contributes to effectiveness and what doesn’t. This tool summarises the most important evidence in a logical and easy to use way (much of it comes from research by Kirby and colleagues into HIV and sexuality education programmes around the world). It aims to help organisations to take well-informed decisions about the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of SRHR programmes, and to modify their work as needed. The outcome of using the tool should be more effective interventions which are empowering and rights- and evidence-based.

You can use the tool to analyse existing interventions, in order to identify what is already going well and what needs improvement. You can also use it to assist with designing new interventions.

Users have used the tool for various purposes:
• Analysing existing SRHR education programmes
• Designing of new SRHR education programmes
• As a framework to guide discussion with donor organisations
• Capacity building and improvement of their projects or programmes
• Documenting intervention planning afterwards
• Modifying an existing intervention to use in a different context
• Assessing project proposals
• For defining advocacy strategies
• Linking and learning between different organisations

However, this framework should not oblige you to implement programmes completely according to the tool; the particular context, implementation setting or mandate of your organisation may require choices that are not in line with the tool.

You can use the tool to analyse or plan a variety of SRHR interventions, for example: school based and out-of-school interventions; large and small projects; with different SRHR focuses; targeting children, younger or older people; for orphans and vulnerable children; or for young people who are at work.

DOWNLOAD the full 2016 PDF.

¡Logrando que suceda! Formando jóvenes para la incidencia política por la salud y los derechos sexuales y reproductivos

¡Logrando que suceda! Formando jóvenes para la incidencia política por la salud y los derechos sexuales y reproductivos

iLogrando que suceda!¡Logrando que suceda! Formando jóvenes para la incidencia política por la salud y los derechos sexuales y reproductivos

Desarrollé este manual de capacitación sobre defensa para dance4life, basado en las actividades que habían desarrollado.  Está acompañado de folletos y un diario de los facilitadores, y fue escrito originalmente en inglés.

(The Spanish translation of Making It Happen!)

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Algunos cambios sencillamente ocurren. el suelo se moja porque está lloviendo. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los cambios viene de alguien. la idea de construir un refugio para no mojarse en la lluvia, luego el trabajo para construirlo. Esta formación es acerca de permitir a los jóvenes que creen cambios, utilicen sus ideas y sus voces de manera efectiva para influir en otros y logren que las cosas sucedan.

dance4life está convencida que la incidencia política es esencial si queremos alcanzar cambios a largo plazo que beneficien a gran cantidad de jóvenes y la comunidad en general. El impulso para esos cambios debe venir de los mismos jóvenes. Ellos conocen mejor los temas que enfrentan y los cambios que se requieren. Con el apoyo de organizaciones relevantes, los jóvenes son los mejores representantes de los temas de la propia gente joven.

¿Cuál es el propósito de este manual de capacitación?

Este manual está escrito para facilitar al personal (de incidencia política) y los facilitadors de dance4life National Concept Owners (NCO – Propietarios de Concepto Nacionales) para capacitar a los jóvenes en la promoción e incidencia política nacional. Es una herramienta que puede utilizar para: Reforzar el conocimiento y la capacidad de los jóvenes a través del aprendizaje acerca de la incidencia política. Ayudar a los activistas jóvenes en averiguar qué quieren cambiar más con respecto a su salud y derechos sexuales y reproductivos (SDSR). Ofrecerles una participación significativa en la refinación, finalización e implementación de sus planes de incidencia política (NCO).

Crear un contexto de aprendizaje positivo

¿Recuerda lo aburrido que puede ser, recibir clases? ¿Cómo la voz del/de la profesor(a) sigue y su mente se distrae – lo frustrado que se siente porque no hay posibilidad de hablar? ¿O sentirse preocupado de que entendería algo ‘mal’? Esta capacitación no debería ser así ¡PARA NADA! Será divertida y creativa e involucrará a todos sin miedo o ansiedad.

¡Su papel no es ser profesor(a) o expert! En cambio usted es un(a) facilitador(a): alguien que hace un proceso de aprendizaje y descubrimiento más fácil. Los métodos en las sesiones de capacitación ayudan a que esto suceda. permiten a los participantes a descubrir las cosas por sí mismos, en lugar de que ser contadas. Su tarea es crear un contexto positivo para su aprendizaje, de las siguientes maneras:

  • Guíe por el ejemplo, con un enfoque positivo, con voluntad de escuchar y una actitud respetuosa.
  • Dele estructura a las sesiones siguiendo el plan de capacitación, explicando qué hay que hacer y controlando el tiempo.
  • Apoye a los grupos en concentrarse en la tarea que están haciendo, en lugar de desviarse del tema.
  • Esté abierto a las discusiones inesperadas pero importantes y sea flexible para adaptar el plan y explicar cambios si es necesario.
  • Gestione las manera de interactuar de las personas si se requiere, de modo que todos tengan la oportunidad de añadir su voz y nadie domine.
  • Responda a cualquier problema que surja, tal vez preguntando al grupo qué hacer.
  • Proporcione a cada persona la oportunidad de dar retroalimentación acerca de la capacitación y de mejorar el proceso.
  • Elogie a los participantes por sus esfuerzos y por las virtudes y el liderazgo que han mostrado.
  • Utilice el humor y el enfoque diplomático para hacer frente a conflictos dentro del grupo.

The Big Picture: A guide for implementing HIV prevention that empowers women and girls

The Big Picture - Implementing HIV prevention

The Big Picture - A guide for Implementing HIV prevention that empowers women and girlsThe Big Picture: A guide for implementing HIV prevention that empowers women and girls

From 2006 to 2010 STOP AIDS NOW! supported an innovative project in Kenya and Indonesia which gave equal weight to HIV prevention, gender equity and human rights. At the end of the project they asked me to set out the theory and practice of their partners’ efforts in a ‘how to’ guide. This is the result, which I co-authored with the project’s manager, Jennifer Bushee.

This guide will be particularly interesting for people working at community level who want to address the structural factors behind the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV.

Download

Extract

This guide provides ‘how-to’ information for developing a ‘transformative approach’ to HIV prevention for women and girls. Such an approach addresses key root causes of vulnerability to HIV and seeks to reshape the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of individuals and communities in favour of women and girls and gender equality. It also aims to empower women and girls to protect themselves from HIV infection and from the negative impact of living with HIV.

It sets out the rationale for working on HIV prevention using a transformative approach. It also shares experiences and promising practices from the Gender Development Project. It then provides 5 steps based on these for developing HIV prevention work aimed at reducing the HIV risk of women and girl through promotion of gender equality and women’s rights.

This guide will be particularly interesting for people working at community level who want to address the structural factors behind the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV.

We note that the advice in this guide is not fixed and definite; please read it as providing suggestions based on the experiences of the partners in the Gender Development Project. The advice should be adapted to fit local needs and the relevant social, political and cultural context.

We also note that this guide is not comprehensive and is not written to support the development of a whole project cycle. It gives guidance about how to think from a ‘gender transformative’ perspective, but it does not, for example, give step-by-step instructions for doing a needs assessment.

Finally, we note that this guide encourages readers to think differently about how to respond to HIV, using a holistic perspective, the so-called ‘big picture’. This approach gives you wider scope for doing HIV prevention work. It allows you to integrate HIV prevention in other work on gender and rights. It also allows you to respond more closely to the felt needs of girls and women. Crucially, the ‘big picture’ approach, over time, allows you to work in a ‘transformative’ way. This means it helps supports people to transform or change gender relations in ways that are beneficial to all, including—but by no means limited to—by reducing vulnerability to HIV transmission.

Good Donorship in a Time of AIDS: Guidelines on Support to Partners to Manage HIV/AIDS in the Workplace

internal mainstreaming HIV

HIV in the workplace
Good Donorship in a Time of AIDS: Guidelines on Support to Partners to Manage HIV/AIDS in the Workplace

These guildlines were the outcome of an interesting process of research and negotiation with five Dutch donors.

In them I set out the sponsoring donors’ commitments to support their partners’ efforts to manage HIV in their workplaces in pilot projects in Uganda and India. I also presented the rationale and basic steps for organisations to do this.

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Extract

Why have we developed these guidelines?

Breaking the silence: in many partnerships between Northern and Southern NGOs, HIV/AIDS is not discussed, or is discussed only in terms of the effects at community level. We want HIV/AIDS to be part of our dialogue with partners, and hope that these guidelines will lead to it being on the agenda, for both donors and partners. The guidelines may also help stimulate discussion within partner organizations.

Acting in solidarity: we are now in the late stages of developing and implementing workplace programs for our own staff, but are funding local partners which lack such programs. We believe we should actively open up dialogue and provide support to our partners, rather than be ‘concerned bystanders’, watching the impacts of HIV/AIDS on our partners but doing little to assist.

Getting our ‘heads out of the sand’: a recent CARE survey3 of 42 NGOs in Southern Africa found that, despite a HIV prevalence rate of around 25%, two thirds of the respondents said they did not think they had any HIV-positive employees! This vividly illustrates how managers may act like ostriches by ignoring difficult realities, a costly habit in the case of HIV/AIDS. These guidelines are about raising our heads, stating our commitments, communicating them to our partners, and helping them also to raise their heads.

Responding to demands from local NGOs: some donors expect better results from NGOs in high prevalence settings, or lower costs, as if HIV/AIDS does not exist. Research with local NGOs shows that instead of that lack of understanding, they want more openness, more support, and more clarity from their donors with regard to managing HIV/AIDS4 . These guidelines should go some way to meeting those demands.

Responding to demands from Program Officers: our Program Officers sometimes get requests from partners to fund their workplace policies. Some of them feel ill-equipped to deal with this new topic, and have asked for guidance. These guidelines should help them make decisions, and should ensure that partners’ requests are dealt with consistently within each of the Dutch donor NGOs.

Influencing others: other NGOs who work through partnership with organizations in the South are facing the same issues, but none have ‘grasped the nettle’ and developed guidelines on good donorship in a time of AIDS. We can share these guidelines with those development agencies, and so use them to stimulate their response. We expect that partners may also use these guidelines to influence their other donors towards ‘good donorship’ with regard to HIV/ AIDS.

Greater accountability: where local NGOs do not have budgets to cover employees’ health care costs, managers may cover the costs with money from other parts of their budgets. They are unlikely to tell their donors about this. These guidelines should increase communication and so accountability between us by providing clarity on what costs we are willing to fund, and by initiating dialogue between donors and partners, so that we can agree budgets to cover the financial costs of HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases.