{"id":75505,"date":"2015-11-23T12:32:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T17:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=75505"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:33:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:33:57","slug":"an-uphill-battle-for-sex-education-in-rural-kenya","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2015\/an-uphill-battle-for-sex-education-in-rural-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"An Uphill Battle for Sex Education in Rural Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"banner-container banner-has-html\">\n<div class=\"videoWrapper\" style=\"position: relative;padding-bottom: 56.25%; \/* 16:9 *\/height: 0;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"855\" height=\"481\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/buniverse\/interface\/embed\/embed.html?v=pB9Mt0\" style=\"position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;width: 100%;height: 100%;frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>\n<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar sphnews-prepress-layout-metabar\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">November 23, 2015<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes a student&#8217;s practicum experience becomes a personal responsibility to a population.<\/p>\n<p><span mce-data-marked=\"1\">Alumna Sarah Stevens (&#8217;15) spent summer 2014 in rural Kenya, researching ways to teach\u00a0<\/span><span mce-data-marked=\"1\"><span mce-data-marked=\"1\">adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH)<\/span>\u00a0to secondary school students.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany programs intending to reduce adolescent pregnancy already exist in Kenya,\u201d Stevens says, but \u201cthere are still rural communities that aren\u2019t being reached.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In those communities, Stevens found, the situation is dire.<\/p>\n<p>The story begins in 2013, when two students at Jera Mixed Secondary School in rural western Kenya died from unsafe abortions.<\/p>\n<p>Maureen Odour, an alumna of the school, was visiting home when she heard the news. The reproductive\u00a0health\u00a0advocate immediately recognized\u00a0what had caused the deaths: a dangerous lack of SRH knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>So Odour founded\u00a0a \u201cGirls Awareness Club\u201d to train students to advocate for themselves and educate their peers.\u00a0The initial cohort of 40 Jera peer educators was enthusiastic\u00a0but\u00a0lacked the\u00a0support to make a sustainable impact.\u00a0So she reached out to friend and colleague <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/profile\/monica-onyango\/\">Monica Onyango<\/a>, clinical assistant professor of global health.\u00a0Onyango, in turn, engaged her former student Stevens.<\/p>\n<p>Together, Odour, Onyango, and Stevens, along with Kenyan videographer Sandra Ruong&#8217;o, created Girls and Boys for Success (GABS) in early 2014. The aim of the advocacy group:\u00a0build on the awareness club model to spread SRH knowledge in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Stevens traveled to Kenya that summer, spending six weeks conducting research at Jera Mixed. She designed and administered a student survey assessing baseline SRH knowledge; participated in the school\u2019s annual general meeting for parents and school stakeholders; and interviewed teachers, administrators, and parents.\u00a0She also met weekly with the existing Girls Awareness Club to discuss the structure of the club and design activities, including poster-making and a visit to nearby primary school, where girls from the club taught a lesson on self-esteem.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_75509\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-75509\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/sph\/files\/2015\/11\/Sarah-Stevens-with-Maureen-Odour-girls.jpg\" alt=\"Sarah Stevens ('15), right, with Maureen Odour and girls from Jera Mixed.\" class=\"size-full wp-image-75509\" height=\"241\" width=\"400\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-75509\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Stevens (&#8217;15), right, with Maureen Odour and girls from Jera Mixed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Stevens found that the need for\u00a0SRH education was still overwhelming.\u00a0While the girls in the club now knew more about SRH, only 58 percent of Jera Mixed students surveyed could name male condoms as a method of preventing pregnancy, and only 17 percent named oral contraceptives. A majority didn\u2019t know where or how to access any form of contraception.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, parents told Stevens that teaching SRH should be the schools\u2019 responsibility, but teachers and administrators said they didn\u2019t have the time or training.<\/p>\n<p>Stevens and Onyango concluded GABS would need a full-time staff member\u00a0to teach the Jera Mixed students\u2014\u201csomeone like me on the ground building that structure.\u201d They plan to pursue grant funding to create a salaried position and to continue making GABS an effective force.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe need is so great everywhere,\u201d says Stevens, \u201cbut I feel this personal responsibility now to this specific region, and that school, and those girls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"mailto:msamu@bu.edu\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michelle Samuels<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[VIDEO] Alumna Sarah Stevens (&#8217;15) and Clinical Assistant Professor Monica Onyango co-founded GABS to bring sex education to rural West Kenyan schools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10989,"featured_media":76176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2265,1900,1265],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3532,3538,3540],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[372],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/75505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75505"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/75505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175386,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/75505\/revisions\/175386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=75505"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=75505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}