Teen Peer Education in Mali

Our Teem Peer education program has been successful running every week! Socrates, our long-time peer educator, is currently in the process to training our teen peer educators. Data from the weekly sessions show that we are reaching a large percentage of girls currently in school. It is encouraging to see what a multi-ethnic place our neighborhood of Sikoro is; we have over teens from over 12 ethnic groups enrolled in our peer education sessions! Once our adolescent educators are trained, they will begin leading sessions on their own and Socrates will give them feedback for a period of time. When they are fully competent, the teen educators will begin holding sessions in their neighborhoods to bring relevant information out into the community.

We have adapted the national model for peer education to get our program rolling, yet we have our sights set on reaching and affecting the largest at-risk population. Through discussions with a colleague who runs Eminyeeto, a peer education program for girls in Uganda, we are inspired to implement peer education as an afterschool program in Mali. The main issue our teens in Sikoro face is early pregnancy which can also mean infection with HIV or other STIs. A medical anthropologist collegue, Mr. Dolo, confirmed our research by telling us that he had been contacted by school directors who complained of girls dropping out due to pregnancy. Once we have a better sense of the effectiveness of our program, we hope to begin making the necessary connections to bring our program to schools. In the words of our Program Director, Dr. Tounkara:

Adolescence is a difficult to time for families as teens reject authority and strive for autonomy. Education through outreach strategies is the best way to avoid the problems associated with the significant rate of physical growth as well as physiological and emotional changes that happen during adolescence that may lead to high-risk behavior such as: early pregnancies, STIs (including HIV and HPV), drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, and eating disorders

Here are the statistics from our weekly sessions:

300      Participants

80%     Female participants

16        Average age

87%     Between the ages of 14 and 18

13%     Older than 18 or younger than14

96%     Attending school

Please support our innitiative as we expand this important program! We greatly appreciate your contribution!

Links:

• Our website