Adolescent Girls Help to Write Manuals Used for Peer Education and Life Skills Programs in Primary Schools in Kenya

JANUARY 2009 — In Kenya's Coast and Rift Valley provinces, 32 Girl Guides whose average age is 13 are proud of how much they contributed to a new peer education manual, Discovering the Potential of Girl Guide Patrol Leaders: A Curriculum of Peer Education Sessions for Use with Pupils in Primary Schools. The manual is now an important tool for a peer education program implemented by the Kenya Girl Guides Association (KGGA), under the aegis of the USAID-funded and FHI-led AIDS, Population, and Health Integrated Assistance Program (APHIA II).

Though KGGA has been collaborating with FHI on similar programs since 1999, this one is quite different. Part of the difference is the targeting of young adolescents and their level of involvement in creating its materials. The 32 girls selected the 12 session topics; wrote the first draft; and ensured that its interactive format, information, and fun activities would engage the interest of adolescents ages 10–15.

Girl Guide patrol leaders in that age range use the manual at their schools to conduct 40-minute peer education sessions (for boys as well as girls) about twice a month, at lunchtime or another convenient period. For each of these sessions, the manual provides scripts for skits and stories, questions and answers, and an "energizer" (or ice-breaker) when participants sing and move around.

The session topics are: values and school performance, self esteem, common illnesses, understanding feelings of attraction, communication skills, helpful adults, decision-making skills, peer pressure, HIV transmission, reducing stigma and discrimination, preventing rape, and refusing drugs and alcohol.

The patrol leaders are encouraged to be role models and to refer to real-life experiences as they encourage participants to delay sexual debut, communicate with parents and guardians for support, and discover and access resources and health services that they or their friends may need.

The sessions are presented in the order set out in the manual, which includes a simple "diary" form for reporting what was done and with how many students. With this form and the standardization required, it is possible to know exactly what several thousand adolescents in Kenya in classes 4–7 are hearing and saying about the dangers of early sex and HIV and what they should do to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing and that of others.

Girl Guides Help to Write a Life Skills Curriculum
Nine other Girl Guides, ages 11–15, contributed to a curriculum development workshop that led to a companion publication: Discovering the Potential of Girl Guides in Schools: A Life Skills Curriculum for Adult Guide Leaders. This manual (also downloadable by the end of 2008) spells out 12 life skills sessions that total 8 hours per trimester and 24 hours over the school year. Each of these sessions is led by an adult Guide leader—usually a teacher—for about 50 Girl Guides per school. Among the girls who complete the sessions, four Girl Guide patrol leaders per school are chosen by their peers to become peer educators.

The sessions focus on communication, decision-making, and planning—tools that will help young adolescents to refuse early sex, talk to others, stay safe and understand risk, resist peer pressure, and consider their next steps and careers. The curriculum includes topics such as saying no, self esteem, myths about HIV and AIDS, rape prevention, understanding feelings, body changes (for girls and boys), pregnancy, common illnesses, and gender roles and cultural norms.

Like the peer education sessions, life skills sessions are learner-centered and interactive. They integrate fun activities and make use of the comic books and stories of UNICEF's Sara Communication Initiative, since their Sara character offers empowering messages that can help overcome real-life challenges and promote appropriate decision-making.

None of this would have been possible without the enthusiastic support of school authorities and Kenya's Ministry of Education and, of course, the commitment and dedication of the Girl Guides and KGGA staff and volunteers.

Positive results
Some parents of peer educators have come to recognize their daughters' great potential and noticed that they became more responsible after taking on that role. One parent also testified that she herself had benefited from what her daughters had shared about decision-making, self-esteem, HIV and AIDS, and other topics.

Peer educators attest to improved grades and changed lives. Maureen Anita, 14, said that session participants "no longer use drugs and others have stopped engaging in sex. They continue to tell us to teach them more."

As for Jane Wambui, 15, she says she now looks at the world "in a different way" and feels "like a hero," since she is able to "save people from HIV."

Learn more: To read more about this program, go to Guiding Peer Education the Kenyan Way in Exchange on HIV/AIDS, Sexuality, and Gender, 2008, issue 4.

PHOTOS: FHI/Kenya
(Top) The group who created the peer education manual gather for a photo. (Middle) A skilled peer educator engages her classmates in a discussion on the dangers of early sex and HIV. (Bottom) Girl Guides helped to compose a new, girl-friendly, life skills curriculum now being delivered by adult Guide leaders for pupils in classes 4–7 in Coast and Rift Valley provinces.  

—Hilary Russell