14th December 2015.
We’re proud to have completed our biggest year yet in sex education within schools in Bali. Visiting 40 schools, over 2,500 children and bringing an important issue that could save their lives.
Our Sex Education program is one of our key programs for helping future generations of Bali achieve their dreams. Having the ability to make informed choices in the future means that they can choose the direction of their life.
Having completed our final two regencies of Karengasem and Bangli, our 2015 program has concluded.
2015’s program has been bigger and better than ever. The project in 2015 was funded solely by the Mel Wolf Foundation.
It enabled us to teach the vitally important issue in 40 schools amounting to 2,607 youngsters.
This has been a huge year for the project. The value of teaching students this information cannot be underestimated. Although we’ll never know how many lives have been changed, what we do know is the project is working. Our feedback and test results have been extremely encouraging.
With spiralling numbers of teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases amongst Bali’s youth, our Sex Education program aims to be the prevention, not the cure.
In April 2013, estimated cases of HIV/AIDS were 7,400 [1]. By December 2014 this figure has increased to 10,371. Officials estimate the real figure could be up to 26,000. [1]
There is no formal sex education program in Indonesia’s national curriculum, leaving youngsters with little ability to make wise choices about sex.
The sessions have been so much fun, but more importantly have educated Bali’s youth on a life saving issue.
One of the key elements of the workshops are the pre and post tests that students are asked to complete. The tests students are given is exactly the same, with the only difference being one is before and one is after the session.
On average, correct answers before the workshops are between 40% and 60%. Correct answers after the workshops average between 80% and 100%.
In November and December, we were also able to launch our child protection awareness workshops to help younger children avoid sexual abuse.
Additionally, we piloted a major aim for next year – educating adults too. Working with parents and families, we ran discussion forums in local communities where adults were able to speak about sexual awareness. The mini sessions are part of our plan to create larger forum in 2016.
Our huge thanks go to the dedicated Opi Sulaeman, who has single handedly developed and evolved the program into the largest and only one of it’s nature in the whole of Bali. Opi is supported by ‘facilitators’ who help her deliver each session.
We thank The Mel Wolf Foundation for their continued support of our Sex Education program. Without them, we would have not been able to undertake the workshops. Who knows how many lives these workshops may have saved!
Now that our 2015 program is over, we have b
een working hard on planning for 2016 – and things are already looking good! Our aims are to grow the program to even more schools (54) and more families, further widening our impact.
You can see all our posts on this program by visiting our rolling newspage or by seeing our program page.
We are still looking for funding for our program in 2016. If you can donate, or know potential funders, please get in touch.
Program Development in figures
Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
Number of Workshops | 14 | 29 | 40 |
Number of Students | 1,045 | 1,545 | 2,607 |
Number of Adults | 15 | 0 | 145 |