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Preparing to Reach Zambia’s Youth   
When 10 teachers from the Lusaka school district got together with CEDPA in April, talk quickly turned to cultural practices that harm girls in their communities. “As young girls, all of them had to undergo a practice very similar to female genital mutilation,” said Mpume Zama, CEDPA/South Africa project director. As adults, they refused to have the practice done to their daughters and vowed to stop it. Their commitment to protecting and empowering girls in their community led these teachers to join with CEDPA and the Forum for African Women Educationalists of Zambia to implement CEDPA’s Better Life Options program in their school district. The program uses CEDPA’s Choose a Future! curriculum to build self confidence and self esteem in adolescents. The April training was a two-week facilitator’s course that gave these teachers the skills they need to facilitate program sessions from the Choose a Future! curriculum on setting goals, communication skills, building healthy relationships, reproductive health, gender-based violence, and community participation.
This year, these facilitators will reach 100 girls in Zambia, ranging in ages from 10-14. In the fall, the program will expand to include boys. Twenty male facilitators will be trained to lead 400 boys through the Better Life Options program. The small add-on in Zambia is part of a larger project, in place since 2006, implementing the Better Life Options program in Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa. The Better Life Option program is a successful model that has been used to reach hundreds of thousands of boys and girls around the world including countries like Egypt, India, Nepal and Nigeria. It is adapted to reflect local priorities and challenges faced by girls and boys. The southern Africa adaptation includes a session on Ubuntu, a traditional African philosophy focusing on respect and compassion for others. Though the project is geared to improve the knowledge and skills of boys and girls, the facilitators go through a type of transformation as well. They become more comfortable discussing topics that are often taboo in their communities, and know how to respond to unexpected questions regarding those topics. In the case of teachers, the training provides a new array of tools for the classroom. “The teachers had gained so much confidence and were utilizing their new facilitation skills,” explained Mpume at the end of the two weeks. The training provided them with skills that they will use to build their students’ knowledge both inside and outside of the classroom. Learn more about CEDPA’s Better Life Options Program. |
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