Youth in Action for Life

Jóvenes en Acción por la Vida (Youth in Action for Life) is the name chosen by young people in Peru, Brazil and Colombia for a programme of HIV prevention in schools in which they play an active part. The programme is sponsored by Save the Children UK and the European Union. The partners in each country are the Institute of Education and Health (IES) in Peru, Gapa-Bahia in Brazil, and Ser Humano in Colombia. The programme began in November 2001 and has a three-year time frame. In Peru, Youth in Action for Life is carried out in the capital, Lima, and in the city of Chimbote, reaching adolescent students aged 12-18 years in 14 public schools, as well as out-of-school youths aged 19-24 years in peripheral urban districts.

To date, 385 male and female youth guides have received training and support from 40 trained teachers. They are organised in a network that will enable them to support one another in carrying out their activities beyond the project's time frame. The guides have reached approximately 6,000 of their peers in- and outside school. They are equipped with educational materials to help them in their work, as well as information that they can distribute to their peers and to teachers, parents and authorities, which have been designed and validated with their help. "Llenando la Mochila" ("Filling the Daypack") is the name given to the main educational material they have produced. It consists of a set of simple guides to inform their peers about STIs, HIV/AIDS, gender issues and sexual and reproductive rights.

Youth guides have carried out a participatory needs assessment in their communities to identify the main health problems, including those related to sexual health.After presenting the results at a public event, they designed action plans to address the priority problems identified. In the current project period, they are being trained to obtain information from the health and education sectors, putting into practice their rights under a new Peruvian law that guarantees citizens access to information from the public sector. A group of peer educators is also being trained in Internet communication skills to improve and monitor the "Punto J" website.

More self-confident

A baseline evaluation was carried out at the beginning of the project, and an evaluation will be done at the end. Although we must await the final results, we know from observations and discussions with peer educators that the programme has made a significant impact on their personal lives and on the way in which their peers and adults view them. They say that they have more self-confidence and are more able to express their ideas and opinions. Their relationships with their parents, teachers and other adults are more open, and they feel good because their peers see them as leaders and the community values their role as peer educators.

Teacher companions, meanwhile, feel closer to the adolescents and feel fewer taboos in talking about issues related to sexuality. They are willing to listen to adolescents without judging or censoring them. Health-care providers indicate that one of the project's most important accomplishments lies in the way the adults and young people work together and the joint work of the health and education sectors. While we do not yet have figures showing an increase in the number of adolescents using health services as a result of the programme, we know that health-care personnel have reached more than 4,000 adolescents through mobile counselling services and educational fairs, answering their questions and providing assistance in the areas of sexual and reproductive health.

Lessons learned

Lessons that we have learned so far include:

Strengthening the advocacy strategy

The peer education strategy used by the programme and the component for strengthening the capacities of health providers is being adopted by the Adolescent's Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Programme carried out by the Ministry of Health in partnership with the German Agency for Development Cooperation (GTZ) in various parts of the country.

The current political situation and backsliding in the health sector in the area of sexual and reproductive health has spurred civil society to take a more important role in setting up task forces and other advocacy groups to defend the gains that have been made in this area. As a result, the Youth in Action for Life Programme has had to strengthen its strategy for advocacy with authorities.

The third year of the project will focus on strengthening the advocacy strategy aimed at raising the awareness of local, regional and central-level authorities about adolescent sexual and reproductive health needs and urging them to take immediate action. As part of the strategy, the programme is currently preparing to launch a campaign to promote adolescent sexual and reproductive rights. The first stage of the campaign will be kicked off in San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima's largest marginal urban district, which is home to 30,000 adolescents. It will later be expanded to the other districts in which the programme is carried out.

The campaign will be launched in conjunction with the health and education sectors and the local government. Three posters have been designed and validated by the adolescents. They depict the faces of young people who are participating in the project and offer messages about prevention to the public. The campaign will include placing billboards in strategic public places in the district, as well as the massive distribution of T-shirts, pins, caps and stickers in the community.

Carmen Murguía Pardo; Institute of Education and Health (IES); Calle República de Chile 641, Lima, Peru; e-mail: ies@terra.com.pe; www.ies.org.pe (Spanish)