Abstract
With only one in five secondary-school aged children attending secondary school, a quarter of teenaged girls being pregnant or already having a child (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2012), and one out of every five people living below the poverty line in Uganda (CIA, 2013) statistics show the ever prevalent need for sexuality education. As an organisation working in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights, Reproductive Health Uganda wants to standardise and integrate sexuality education in all their projects through developing and rolling out a sexuality education intervention. The challenges faced in this are the concept of ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ being questioned by the government, and the implementer being the main determinant of what information is provided because they have no handbook to follow. To address these challenges, Reproductive Health Uganda needed to redefine and scope sexuality education. Based on the field and desk research sexuality education was defined as follows: ‘providing age-appropriate information on the aspects of sexuality in order to increase knowledge and build (life) skills which enables the individual to understand oneself and make informed decisions’. Based on the outcomes of this research, eleven recommendations for the future sexuality education intervention were made which can be related to either the preparation or sustainability of the intervention.
Highlights
In Uganda, less than twenty per cent of the secondaryschool aged children attend secondary school, one in four teenaged girls is pregnant or already has a child (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2012), and almost twenty per cent of the population lives below the p overty line (CIA, 2013)
The objective of this research is to develop a definition and scope of sexuality education that can be used by Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU) to design and implement their sexuality education intervention
Several Ugandan policies were found to be related to sexuality education
Summary
In Uganda, less than twenty per cent of the secondaryschool aged children attend secondary school, one in four teenaged girls is pregnant or already has a child (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2012), and almost twenty per cent of the population lives below the p overty line (CIA, 2013). Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU) is a member association of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and active in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). There is no standardised way of working, and the content of projects strongly depends on the implementer - often a peer educator. This is problematic because it can lead to inaccurate or incomplete spreading of information. Likewise, making it difficult to monitor and evaluate its overall impact and effectiveness
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