1st May 2018.
What do Instagram, mobile phone applications and HIV-AIDS awareness clubs have in common? They’re all part of our plan to engage schools and communities in life saving proactive sexual health education in Bali.
Workshops are normally delivered to 120 students in a day, but KSPAN groups can educate so many more students
Living in the Future
With technology an ever constant presence in every day lives of Balinese teenagers, we are also presented with the challenge to adapt our approach.
Most teenagers in Bali now have access to a phone and social media.
Decisions Affect Lives
However, one thing many do not have access to
Getting together materials to deliver their own workshops to their school
is sexual education – meaning teenagers grow into adults who are not well equipped to make informed choices.
It’s highlighted by the recent rise in HIV-AIDS in Bali, with a jump of 24% in confirmed cases between 2016 and 2017.
This statistic doesn’t tell the whole story; more identified cases doesn’t necessarily mean a huge increase – it could also be better standards of testing.
What doesn’t change is the fact that a shocking
Instagram provides a great way for schools to engage and show their work
amount of people are now living with HIV-AIDS in Bali, with most recent reports suggesting over 17,000 people identified (and more unidentified).
Informed Decision Making
The real fact behind all of this is that these are all cases that could have been prevented – if adults had learned about health education as teenagers.
With traditional sex education workshops
Soon to launch: a new mobile phone app for teenagers in Bali.
reaching out to over 10,000 individual students directly, technology gives us the chance to go a step further.
Capacity building is now the main focus of this long running program. Giving schools the ability to teach themselves and their communities the real goal.
Tech for KSPAN Clubs
With each school obliged to have a ‘KSPAN’ club (a HIV-AIDS awareness group), there is
Instagram profiles for each group help to inject a sense of competition and pride
already a great structure for disseminating health information. However, these student led groups often find themselves unable to deliver any meaningful programs.
Enter the Bali Children’s Project KSPAN Awards. Each year, we run a competition amongst KSPAN clubs, having given each of them guidance and support along the way.
Clubs are awarded based on their progress, inventiveness, ideas and activity.
Social Media and the Age of
We won!? Students from SMPN Bebandum receiving their award for 2017.
Phones
To give these clubs all they need, they are supplied with booklets, materials and a soon-to-launch mobile phone application. The materials include information, quizzes and all a school needs to disseminate their own information.
From special awareness days, to regular school speaker announcements, the clubs are taking on the challenge and doing very well. Each club is posting their activities to Instagram to help
Running through the information provided in our sexual education booklets
drive a community effort as well as show the difference they are making.
With a mobile phone application about to be launched, clubs will have a new resource that can be downloaded completely free, to an unlimited amount of students.
Support Needed
It’s all possible thanks to support from funders The Mel Wolf Foundation, Three Monkeys Cafes and Canggu Community School.
We are fortunate enough to have already had some donations for the 2019 program, although we are still searching for funding for the whole program.
Being a more long term program, Sex Education is often the program that struggles to gain funding. If you are interested in supporting the future of this project please get in touch.
