Adolescent / Youth Development

Introduction:
Prior to the commencement of HDI's adolescents' reproductive health and rights programme in 1998, the organization, between February and March of the same year, conducted an in-depth study on the sexual and reproductive health practices of in-school adolescents in Lagos Mainland Local Government Area.

Findings revealed that there were incidences of sexual harassment of female students by male students and teachers, unwanted fondling, unwanted pregnancy, unconfirmed cases of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases. These findings were later incorporated into materials used for reproductive rights (RR) education among in-school adolescents.  The findings also prompted the organization to make reproductive health and rights education and training among in-school adolescents a priority.  To this end, they have the following programmes:

Empowerment Lectures Among In-School Adolescents:
Lectures on Reproductive Rights are given among young people in secondary schools by experts in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Issues raised include male/female development, male-female relationships, reproductive rights, pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted infections, HIV & AIDS.

Training of Trainers Workshops:
Workshops are organized to sensitize and train school principals, guidance counselors and subject teachers on safeguarding adolescents reproductive health and rights.  So far, this activity has been successful through HDI's collaboration with the 20 Local Education Districts in Lagos State.

Other programmes are organized for adolescents in the course of the year.  Some of these programmes include but are not restricted to:

Get Global Training for Ages 10 to 16 years:
Here, adolescents are taught the characteristics of 'a good active global citizen'.  They are also trained to assess themselves, think of how they can imbibe the characteristics of the active global citizen as well as use the same to positively affect their local and international environment.

Poster Competition:
A poster competition tagged 'The Adolescent's Mind and Reproductive Health and Rights' was organized for junior secondary school one to senior secondary school two (JSS1 - SSS2) students in Lagos State.  About 300 posters were received from the students state-wide and after an extensive screening process, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place and 10 consolation prize winners emerged.  The poster competition further resulted in a poster exhibition of all the posters and unveiling of the winning posters.  HDI has reproduced the first three posters and is widely circulating them.