Life Skills and Peer Education for Chadian Youth

During the past months the International Blue Cross Programme officer has done in collaboration with the Chadian Blue Cross organisation a vast mission to prepare a new phase for the project.This has included extensive background work on development of IBC strategy that covers also programmatic priorities and IBC strategic objectives for international development work:

–Life Skills programme linkage to IBC strategy

–New Phase: from “project” to “programme”

–Research and new design of Life Skills programme priorities

–Linkage to new Sustainable Development Goals (focus on 3.5.1)

–Coherence with Swiss Development Corporation and partner strategies

–Set up of a stronger MER (Monitoring, Evaluation & Reporting) System

One of the themes for the new phase is to ensure that the life skills will reach the out of school youth through work that is done through moto taxi drivers. One of the biggest challenges in Africa is to reach the out of school youth in order to protect them from social exclusion. The Blue Cross Chad project has created this innovative approach to reach a big group of these youth and the work really makes a difference. 

The majority of motor taxi drivers are youth. These are youth that have access only to daily disposable income and live in precarious economic situation. As a result, the experience shows that many of them have resorted to spending habits that see them abuse of alcohol and other intoxicants. For example Tramol, that is taken to “give courage”. There is a lot of peer influence in the group and that is boosting up the usage of Tramol in the target group. The community is partially aware of it but there is weak mobilisation at the community level and this is not able to address the issue. Nevertheless, among this target group the use of strong liquor in sachets has become a growing concern. It is not unusual to see riders with a small sachet in their pocket. This social acceptance is something that the CBT project seeks to redress. This is done through life skills sessions that are run at the motor taxi stations. This work really makes a big difference to ensure safer driving habits and safer communities. We tahnk you for your continues support that enables us to receive the co-funding for this project. We still have a funding gap for 2017 and your support really makes a difference!

We will be visiting the project at the end of January and we look forward to sharing more news with you in our return.