"My Future Is My Choice" Life Skills Programme, Namibia

Project name and Location:

"My Future Is My Choice" (MFMC) Life Skills Programme, Windhoek, Namibia

Background/Rationale for Project: HIV is a very serious threat to young people in Namibia. Namibia has HIV prevalence rates among adults 15 to 49 years of age of just under 20%. This is a very serious problem for a country of only 1.7 million people. To counter this situation, MFMC was designed to reach young people, through young people, with sexual health information as well as strengthen young peoples' communication, negotiation and decision making skills so that they are able to make safe choices related to their sexual health and associated risk behaviours.

Project Description:

Component of a five-year co-operation programme between the Government of Namibia and UNICEF, entitled the Youth Health and Development Programme (YHDP). For more information on the YHDP, please refer to the case description.

Timeframe: 1997 - 2001

Initiator(s): Government of Namibia and UNICEF

Implementer(s): Key line Ministries (i.e. Ministry of Basic Education, Ministry of Youth and Sports), UNICEF, and Regional Committees

Funding Source(s) and Overall Budget: Funding provided by the Government of Sweden, German National Committee for UNICEF, UNICEF NY, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the Irish Government.

Partner(s)/alliances: Ministries of Youth and Sports, Health and Social Services, Basic Education and Culture, National Youth Council, NGO's and religious organisations, such as the Catholic Church.

Objectives:

• To provide young people who are not having sexual intercourse with the skills to delay sexual intercourse.
• To prevent young people from becoming infected with HIV.
• To provide young people with facts about sexual health, pregnancy, STDs, and HIV/AIDS
• To improve the decision-making skills of young people
• To improve the communication between boys and girls, between friends, between young people and their parents and their community.
• To provide young people with the information and skills required to face peer pressure around the use of non-prescription drugs and alcohol
• To provide young people with the skills they require to make well informed choices about their sexual behaviour.

• 1997: 7,500 youth trained.
• 1998: 21,000 youth trained.
• 1999: funds were provided to the regional YHDP committees to reach just over 30,000 young people.
• Training facilitated by recent secondary school graduates to mixed groups of up to 25 participants - mostly between the ages of 15 - 18 with some aged 19 and 20 who want to be a part of the programme.
• Approximately equal numbers of males and females.

• Let's play: Games to teach skills in a fun way or to make people relax
• Let's do: Activities to practice what they have learned and/or small group work
• Let's talk: Questions and discussion time. Discussing and asking questions is very important for young people as this helps them to think critically.
• Closing circle: A relaxing exercise and/or closing discussion on each question

• Initially, in 1995 and 1996, research was done with 400 young people from the Omusati and Caprivi regions, which helped in the initiation of the programme.
• Young people were involved in the review and revision of the training material in 1998.
• Over 600 young people around the country are facilitating the life skills training.
• Another 60 young people are involved in the supervision and monitoring of the implementation of the life skills programme. They also undertake attitude and knowledge surveys in the areas where the activity is implemented.
• Young people are members of the regional and sub-regional committees, which manage the YHDP.
• Each region also sends young people to the annual programme review and planning meetings.
• As of 1999, young people are involved in assessment of how friendly services for young people are in their local hospital, clinic and youth centres.

• Over 50,000 young people have completed 20 hours of participatory peer facilitated life skills education
• Widespread distribution IEC materials to young people and to community members
• The decentralisation of the programme management to all 13 regions.
• Improved inter-sectoral collaboration and the active participation of the young people and private sector and NGOs in programme implementation.
• Improved access to adolescent friendly health services and condoms

• There is the ongoing struggle of obtaining adequate financial resources.
• The decentralisation and development of the capacity of partners to manage the activity is ongoing, with every region facing and addressing similar and specific constraints.
• The development of the training and support materials and the printing and distribution of the materials took much longer than anticipated.
• Sustaining the volunteers.
• Maintaining access to schools.

• MFMC has been shown to be effective in reducing risk behaviour. The involvement of young people in the implementation and monitoring of activity has been a key to the success of the programme. The programme should have involved young people in the initial design of the programme. This was done in 1998, but should have been done from the start. There should have been a system to sustain the involvement of young people who had completed MFMC in peer education and HIV awareness activities (drama, etc). This was added to the programme in 1999. There is a need to ensure that there are parallel activities in place to support improving access to services (ie. condoms) for young people. This was started in 1999.
• Another important lesson is to create an enabling environment for risk reduction behaviour change. This can be started by ensuring that parents, teachers, local leaders, opinion leaders and service providers are oriented on the activity and asked to support it in their communities.
• Teachers were identified at first to facilitate the life skills training. This was not very successful, but they are important allies and have been re-integrated into the activity in a supervisory role.
• It is important to get the right incentives for the volunteers. The activity started with a rather high, by local standards, fee being paid to trainers and facilitators. Many young people were motivated to volunteer based on the financial incentive. Better supervision has weeded out many of these volunteers. New activities and reporting requirements have also been developed as criteria for young people to receive the same amount of fee. This problem could have been avoided if the project when it started looked at the incentives being provided by other programmes.