At the time the African continent is focused on the harnessing of demographic dividend and investment in youths, Sexual education becomes a very important issue for the good moral upbringing of our youths as youths are the leaders of tomorrow.
Members of the government as well as international organizations are putting hands together to involve young Cameroonians in leadership and development. With the vision of ZONEZIWOH MBONDGULO-WONDIEH, the Founder/CEO of the NGO Women For A Change, the programme was launched many years ago and is reaching many youths in the country. On the 1st of august 2018, the Yaoundé Peace house welcomed a delegation of about 20 volunteer facilitators from various backgrounds for a training workshop Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Sexuality and Reproductive Health Rights, human rights, leadership and development. The training which took 3 days had as theme “Building Capacities and Facilitating the Role of g-She Volunteers and College Authorities in delivering CSE Curriculum”.
The interactive workshop saw the participation of Mr. OBOUGOU Jean-Oscar, from the Ministry of Secondary Education (MINSEC), who spoke about the status of CSE in Cameroon and the role the Ministry plays in lobbying for the effective inclusion of CSE in the school curriculum. Participants learned from his intervention that, the Ministry supports any action put in place to support CSE in schools as it has priority policies to fight against HIV/AIDS in schools in Cameroon. They also learned that, CSE is included in the schools curriculum and that the curriculum is national and include general and technical education systems. The event also welcomed UNESCO’s representative from the regional office for central Africa, Dr Bruno DZOUNESSE TAYIM who spoke about the importance of CSE especially as it concerns teaching young girls to “negotiate” the use of condoms. He also said CSE will go a long way in solving the problem of inter-generational relationships and teaching the importance of equality. He said youths should not forget that abstinence too is important… it is important to push as far as possible the age of first s*e*xual intercourse. This year, both school representatives and facilitators were trained together. The programme is based on Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights, Human rights and leadership. It is expected that, this new batch of volunteers start this coming September to deliver CSE and SRHR lessons in some secondary schools in the towns of Yaoundé and Douala. This 3-days workshop was very beneficial to both the volunteers and the organizers as they learned, exchanged and were trained on important societal themes like gender, feminism, leadership team work and development.
Note: WFAC (Women For A Change), was founded in 2009 and is a young women-led organization, working for women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights(SRHR) and the g-She(Gender, Sexuality/society and health education) is one of the programmes that the feminist NGO runs.
