Redefining and Scoping Sexuality Education for RHU

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.