Sustainability issues with adolescent RSH programmes

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum members:

I believe Ms.Arati Samajpati has raised an issue that all of us working with

adolescent RSH have been facing - and fighting against - for some time now: The

lack of sustainability in initiatives for adolescent RSH education.

Our media group has been working on a communication tool for sex education/RSH

education in schools ( " Growing Up " ) for over five years now, and it's become

pretty much a labour of love for us. Designed as the core around which schools

and organizations working with adolescents can build a long term intervention

for young people, the Growing Up tools are now being incorporated

into their programmes by several schools and NGOs across India and South Asia.

Our initial formative research for the project suggested right away that such a

communication tool would need to be used in a long term intervention, that would

allow users to digest the informnational content, and allow facilitators to

build on the content provided by the tools themselves: As any communicator will

tell you, it's extremely difficult to create a measurable long

term Knowledge-Attitude-Practice impact on a group - adult or adolescent -

within typical intervention durations (6 - 18 months). And that's where the

dichotomies begin.

It's difficult for the NGOs (and developmental communication creators like us)

to sustain these interventions in the long term off our own bats, because we're

not equipped funds-wise or personnel-wise to support such an initiative. So

every time we become a part of a large scale nationwide/multi-organization

intervention programme for adolescents, we end up facing the music with

the schools we actually work with - who see us as opportunists going through the

motions, because we are never able to interact with them consistently.

(Ms.Samajpati correctly points out that our credibility is at stake here.)

Yet - these short sighted schools programmes do keep getting implemented,

because policy makers are - finally! - realising that issues like STIs, HIV and

gender need to be talked about comparitively EARLY in life, when potential

misinformation has not had a chance to take root. Talking to adolescents gives

us a clearcut opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the way

sexuality, reproduction and HIV are perceived by individuals who will be adult

members of the community not very far in the future. (We can discuss how early

this should beging in a seperate discussion!) However, all the positives that

this realisation has brought are undone by the usual mad scramble for kudos,

immediate reults - and the need to quickly spend the remainder of

the budget within a given financial year.

So what's the way out? We can all hope that the situation changes, and that

nodal government organizations, i-NGOs, bilaterals and other international

development agencies wake up: Campaigning in order to wake them up is certainly

one part of the solution. The other part, in my view, is to stop thinking in

terms of working during these large scale projects with 20 or more

schools at a time, and select a few schools - maybe 2 or 3; more if your budgets

will allow it - and work with them through the good times and the bad. At least

we won't lose face with them, and/or risk all the work and toil we put into

these programmes.

It may not look like a dramatic solution, but it does add up: If 200

organizations across the country select 3 schools each, that makes 600 schools.

With a programme that addresses classes VI to XII in a phased manner in each

school, and an average student population of 35 per class in urban/peri-urban

areas, that already makes a conservative 1,26,000 adolescents we can

comfortably address IN THE LONG TERM, IN A SUSTAINABLE MANNER. I think that's a

great beginning, while we wait for the light to dawn.

Our media group is really better equipped to develop the communication tools for

these interventions; but, hey, we're doing this because we want to make a

difference in the first place. Since the formative research for these projects

involves extensive workshop programmes with adolescents to start with, we've

just gone on and continued working with some of the schools with all

the time and fundingwe've been able to spare. It's heartbreaking to select some

schools and leave the rest out when ALL of them so obviously need these inputs -

but like I said, if we're going to make that difference, we'll have to start at

some level, or continue compounding a policy error-in-progress.

Comments, anyone?

Best,

N.Ramakrishnan

Director, Ideosync Media Combine

Email: ideosync@...