Life Skills and Peer Education for 14,000 students

In December schools in Namibia are closed for Summer Holidays and life skills classes are not held. This allows the team of Schools Awareness Creation Project (SACP) to concentrate on other activities such as Community Outreaches. In December 2013 the team headed out for Swakopmund, a town at the coast of Namibia, around 350 km from Windhoek where they conducted a 5 day community outreach campaign. Visual aids on the dangers of drugs and alcohol were printed and hung up, fliers and informative pamphlets were handed out, and dancing competitions, quizzes and games were held in a shopping complex, attracting more than 200 persons every day. While being at Swakopmund in the Erongo Region, meetings were held with various existing and potential stakeholders to discuss the expansion of the SACP into their region. 

During the project development phase it was decided to expand the SACP project to reach out to primary schools in addition to delivering life skills classes at high schools only. The new target group of primary school children was selected because of the early onset of substance use prevalent in Windhoek, which makes health promotion and prevention of addiction at primary school age especially important.

Before the new school term started 6 new field workers joined the SACP and the whole team underwent refresher trainings and team building sessions. When it was time to go back to school each field worker was assigned to two schools, a high school and its primary, making the SACP active in 30 schools at present – namely 15 primary and 15 high schools. This is double the number of schools this project had reached in 2013 and means that monthly more than 5’000 learners are directly participating in the programme through life skills classes and alternative activity clubs.