Sexual Education in School (SOS) – Belgium (BeMSA)

Name of the activity: Sexual Education in School (SOS)

Country/NMO: Belgium (BeMSA)

Program: Comprehensive Sexuality Education

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

Sexual education at school is a volunteer project, initiated by BeMSA and supported by ICRH and Sensoa. With this initiative, we want to give adolescents access to reliable information about sexuality, relationships, contraception and STD prevention. In an airy educational way, we try to give the youngsters the ability to make informed and individual decisions about their body and health. In addition, we want to break some existing myths about these topics. Medical students go to high schools in which young people (13-17 years) get a four hour session. The SOS project is a form of peer education in which young people are supported to bring about a health-promoting behavioural change with other young people. This leads to a lower threshold for talking about sensitive subjects.

Focus area:

Peer Education with adolescents and young people on a variety of topics pertaining to Sexual Health

Problem statement:

The mean age that young people in Belgium have sex for the first time is 15 years. However, statistical evidence reports a decrease of the use of contraceptive measures. Moreover, research showed an increase of the occurrence of STI’s.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

The target group are young adults who are in high school (13-17 years).

Objectives and indicators of success:

Objectives: To improve the knowledge about sex and sexuality
Indicators: evaluation report improvement after a S.O.S. lesson has been given.
Goal: improvement of knowledge about sex and sexuality
Objective: Create awareness concerning sexual health
Indicators: evaluation report improvement after a S.O.S. lesson has been given.
Goal: Making people aware about their sexual health

Methodology:

We want to give adolescents access to reliable information about sexuality, relationships, contraception and STD prevention. In an airy educational way, we try to give the youngsters the ability to make informed and individual decisions about their body and health and break some existing myths about these topics. The project is a form of peer education in which young people are supported to bring about a health-promoting behavioural change with other young people.

Plans for evaluation:

The evaluation includes the following questions: Is there a subject that you wanted to know more about? Do you feel that we answered all your questions? Do you have remaining questions? What are your remaining questions? Afterwards the outcomes will be compared with the initial statistics.