February 27, 2019 – Recently, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) in partnership with UNESCO conducted a five-day training workshop for 61 teachers (42 men and 19 women) on Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) at the PoC III, a Protection of Civilians site operated by the United Nations in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. It is our belief that peace and healthcare are mutually reinforcing conditions necessary to increase resilience and sustainability for communities.
According to UNAIDS, there were 200,000 people living with HIV in South Sudan as of 2016, with 16,000 new HIV infections per year and 13,000 AIDS-related deaths. That rate has increased at a three percent rate since 2010, due in large part to low levels of healthcare infrastructure and investment gaps in HIV-related response. To help address this crisis, WPDI joined forces with UNESCO to mobilize teachers to serve as a vanguard in the dissemination of a culture of prevention through the provision of knowledge, skills, and tools to address HIV.
The workshop brought together educators from 11 primary and three secondary schools at the POC3 and was conducted with support and funding from UNESCO. It addressed targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) concerning health (SDG3) and education (SDG4) by aiming to heighten awareness about HIV/AIDS, especially at the POC3, so that the teachers could better provide young people with accurate and helpful healthcare-related information. Throughout the five-day period, workshop participants increased their knowledge through structured briefings as well as interactive sessions and exchanged with their colleagues on “best practices”. They were also able to brainstorm on how to teach CSE in their schools as well as address some of the cultural hurdles CSE-related topics tend to face.
After completing the training, the 61 teachers were very satisfied with the content of the workshop. Community leaders and other camp groups, such as the youth association, even asked to take part in future training. The interest in WPDI’s CSE workshop created at the POC3 is a positive sign that the community as a whole is determined to address the issue in earnest, starting with efforts at creating a culture of health prevention among children and youths.