The Stepping Up! plane has taken off…
After months of preparation and laying the groundwork, pre-identified participants who met the criteria we were looking for in this Stepping Up! project on Saturday 19th November 2022 officially started their sessions using the two adapted curricular. Stepping Stones is being used by youth aged 15-18 years and 19-24 years in separate peer groups for males and females, and Families Matter! is used for parents of the 15-18 year-olds going through the Stepping Stones curricular.
Stepping Stones is a workshop series designed as a tool to help promote sexual health, improve psychological well-being and prevent HIV/STIs among adolescents and young people. The workshops address questions of gender, sexuality, STIs, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, gender violence, communication and relationship skills. Stepping Stones workshops provide opportunities for participants to examine their values and attitudes towards gender and relationships, to build on their knowledge on aspects of sexuality and STIs including HIV/AIDS and to develop skills to help them communicate with others and ensure that other people know exactly what they want. The workshops are based on participatory learning approaches as we all know that we learn better when we have our knowledge affirmed and are able to discuss and decide things for ourselves, rather than just receiving lectures.
The Families Matter! Program (FMP) is an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention for parents, guardians, and other primary caregivers of preadolescents ages 9–14 years and adolescents 15-19 years. FMP works in many different ways to strengthen and support families in order to raise healthy children and help children reach their life goals. The ultimate goal of FMP is to reduce sexual risk behavior among adolescents – including delaying onset of sexual debut – by giving parents/caregivers the knowledge, skills, comfort, and confidence to deliver primary prevention messages to their children and to create a protective environment. More effective parental communication and positive parenting practices such as monitoring and supervision can help to delay their children’s sexual behavior and increase their children’s protective behaviors as they get older. The skills and knowledge parents develop during FMP sessions not only have a one-time impact, but can also be applied throughout the child’s life, with the opportunity to tailor information to children’s needs and questions, further building an ongoing relationship between the parent/caregiver and the child.
The goal of Stepping Up! is to address the cultural, religious and agender norms related to sexual and reproductive health in Western Kenya. We hope that at the end of the sessions, at the individual level, participants will have gained practical knowledge and improved SRH knowledge, attitudes and skills among youth, including awareness about sexuality, conception, and ways to avoid pregnancy. At the household level, there will hopefully be more positive attitudes about family planning methods among youth and their parents, reduced stigma related to SRH among youth and their parents, and improvement in communication skills between young women and their intimate partners and with their parents. As well, at the community level, we hope this project will reduce negative gender-role stereotypes that put young women at risk of early pregnancy, and reduce stigma surrounding young women who find themselves in challenging early pregnancy situations.
Stepping Up!, Kuwa na msimamo tahidi, jenga msingi bora (take a strong stand and build a good foundation).
Stepping Up!, Building stronger relationships among youth and parents to increase family planning use in western Kenya.
