The Gender and Counselling Unit, in collaboration with the UPSA Medical Directorate has organized an outreach program at the Seventh Day Adventist Basic Schools, at Madina in the La-Nkwantanang Madina Municipality.
The programme, organized in two batches to ensure adherence to COVID-19 safety protocols, was aimed at providing a common platform for a guileless discussion on adolescent reproductive health and sexuality.
It was also intended to offer guidance to the pupils by providing them with suitable information that would shape their understanding of the various phases of adolescence as well as expose them to some of the challenges they are likely to face as teenagers.
Participants were also given tips on building their self-confidence, ways of interacting with the opposite sex and nurturing their personality as adolescents.
“They were also asked to write anonymously about some of the issues that they would not discuss or find it difficult to discuss with their parents, and about 90% of the pupils expressed worry about their sexual behaviours,” Mrs Patience Mba, Head of the Gender Unit at UPSA said.
“Observing these students pour out their frustrations and uncertainties about their sexuality calls for a more critical focus on sex education in our future programs,” she added.
Mrs. Mba believes that the program achieved its purpose and it would be extended to other basic schools within the University’s catchment area.
