Maherunesa Khandaker
Project Title:
Youth Sexual Health Advocacy and Guidance: Portsmouth
Project Location: Project implementation location (Country & City)
Portsmouth, UK
Project duration: both starting and ending month and year (MM/YYYY) respectively
08/2011 to 08/2012
Total Project Cost in GBP£: 6829
Project Background/Need statement/Problem Analysis:
Describe the community or communities in which your project will be implemented.
The project will be implemented at 3 schools in the town of Portsmouth.
Describe the specific need or problem that your project attempts to address.
The project attempts to address teenage pregnancies (and the general improvement of sexual health); this project will be addressing on shifting attitudes towards safe sex, teenage pregnancies as well as aiming to lower the incidence of pregnancies themselves.
Please include what other organizations are doing to address this problem, and what gaps remain.
From surveys completed by young people it has been found that all too often, sexual health services in the UK involve too much biology and that it isn’t necessarily relatable to their relationships. Much of the time young people feel like those that teach them about sexual health are too embarrassed, they aren’t frank enough – so more confident people are required to teach about the subject. Often sexual health advice centres etc are hard to reach or not known about by young people.
Describe the community, the economic opportunities, the basic social amenities available, try to link it up with the issue.
England has the highest under 18 conception rate in Western Europe with an average of 41.7 per 1000, whilst Portsmouth’s teenage pregnancy rate is above this as it is at 57.7 per 1000 teens. However it has been found that 47% of these conceptions result in abortion, suggesting that young people are not accessing effective contraception and may be engaging in more risky behavior, pointing to the need for better advice and information about sex and relationships. Reducing teenage pregnancy requires strong partnership working, though it requires a spread of different tactics. There are many sexual health services in Portsmouth, offering free condoms and biological advice; if these worked with the unique emotional and relatable advice offered by my initiative, then this will make for a truly effective strategy in combating teenage pregnancy.
Why are you working on this specific project instead of others?
I am working on this initiative as it is led by young people for young people, creating a self sustaining model of peer facilitated learning about issues of health. Where young people have complained that sexual health services are too impersonal and biological, this specific project will deal with the emotions involved in sexual relationships (which is vital in getting young people to value sex more and realizing the realities of having a baby so young) as well as making young people understand the realities of having children during their teenage years so that young people can relate more to the sexual health advice given and heed it.
Baseline Project Information:
Before starting the project next year we are conducting a survey to assess what aspects of sexual health education need further addressing, we are using the website “Survey Monkey” and distributing survey using our networks, primarily youth networks such as members of The British Youth Council and through social media including Facebook and Twitter. The survey has already been created 10 months in advance of the project allowing us plenty of time to review what needs to be implemented in the project. The survey is currently being distributed, from this we shall create a report and form the baseline information for the project.
Project Summary/Description:
Provide a summary of the project for which you are requesting funds that includes the mission and activities of the project
We will train a group of 25 young people aged 15-20 years from 3 different schools in the city of Portsmouth in the UK to become peer to peer sexual health advisors at their schools in order to provide basic education on sex and relationships to lower the number of unplanned, teenage pregnancies in my community and consequently stop young girls from dropping out of their education.
The 25 young people will be trained by us over 4 weeks in the summer of 2011 so that they are confident to use their new skills at the start of the new academic year in September 2011. They will be trained in public speaking, basic sexual health, in confidentiality and how to deliver creative methods of sexual health education, such as games. They will be supported in securing a whole school presentation at the start of term to deliver in each of the schools they are a part of, then in collaboration with the Headmaster we will ensure that the students can secure a lunchtime sexual health advice session every Friday to make advice accessible to their peers. The advice will consist of much personal advice, offering help on relationships and dealing with emotions as young people have said most other sexual health organisations offer too much impersonal and scientific advice. On occasions a health professional from a local partner sexual health organisation will be invited to these sessions to offer medical advice.
Project Goal/Aim: Please give a short description of the overall, long-term, development goal towards which the project is expected to contribute.
This project is a part of Youth Sexual Health Advocacy and Guidance (currently known as Global Forum 40) which will train young people (under 25 years of age) from 40 different countries to become sexual health ambassadors in their local communities. Our overall long term aim is to make health information and care equal and universal for young people all over the world.
By 2012 we would like to be a leading authority on young people’s health, acting as a bridge between young people and governments and organisations around the world to help shape policies and lead the youth fight to eradicate the stigma attached to health issues including HIV/AIDS and mental illness and resolve lacking healthcare around the world.
Project Objectives:
In May 2011 put out a call for applications to become a “Community Sexual Health Ambassador”, this role will be advertised by contacting the 3 target secondary schools in the area. The application will ask for the applicant to be aged 15-20. Interviews will be held in July, and training will commence in August over 4 Saturdays. The training materials which will include posters will be produced and provided by the Global Forum 40 team. We will look for 7-9 people to hire from each of the 3 schools.
In addition to basic sexual health knowledge, information that the ambassadors will be taught to give out will include the addresses of local NHS sexual health clinics, we will supply them with leaflets and emails to refer to these addresses at the end of the training in August 2011.
In September 2011, the ambassadors will be encouraged to give a presentation in front of their school to talk about and introduce the issue of teenage pregnancy, followed by classroom presentations to promote their new advice sessions and basic sexual health. We will push for schools to implement the Friday lunchtime sexual health advice sessions where the ambassadors will offer one on one advice from the beginning of October. We also aim to collaborate with other local sexual health services with health professionals to drop in and offer medical advice in the lunchtime sessions. Our target is to have around 20 young people attend each of the lunchtime advice sessions.
The target is that by September 2012, per school that has taken part in the programme, the number of teenage pregnancies will be reduced by 80%, which will consequently lower the drop out rate (for this reason)
Project Activities:
This project requires 25 young people from Portsmouth to act as sexual health ambassadors in their schools. To find these 25 young people, by 15th May 2011 the Outreach Coordinator will put out a call for applications to become a “Community Sexual Health Ambassador”. This role will be advertised by contacting the 3 target secondary schools in the area by email and phone, we will ask the schools to send us a copy of their newsletters to ensure our advert is well publicised. The application will ask for the applicant to be aged 15-20.
Interviews will be held in July at the Community Centre in Portsmouth which will cost £35 to hire out over the day, and training delivered by the directors, outreach coordinator and events officer will commence in August over 4 Saturdays, the training will take place at the Community Centre. The training materials will be produced and provided by the Global Forum 40 team. We will look for 7-9 people to hire from each of the three schools.
By 20th September 2011 the ambassadors will have delivered a presentation to their schools and we will help them to secure Friday lunchtime sexual health advice sessions from the beginning of October. We will support them in this as the Outreach Coordinator will be explaining to their Headmasters the effectiveness of peer to peer advice and will present the head teacher our Youth S.H.A.G. report on the sexual health habits of young people (made using the results of our survey we are currently carrying out) to show them the statistics.
The lunchtime sessions will continue throughout the academic year. By the end of the year we will have evaluated the effectiveness of the project, then if the first project has been successful we will hold another 4 week training event over August hiring 3 more ambassadors from each school but taking into account what alterations are required and also with the help of the previous ambassadors to give them advice on what to expect of the role. The project will continue similarly the next September and onwards.
Description of Project Beneficiaries:
This project will benefit 15-20 year old boys and girls in secondary school/college in the town of Portsmouth in the UK girls. The project will be implemented at state schools.
Target Community input:
The project will take place in schools, for example all presentations and advice sessions will take place in spare rooms in the schools which can be used by their student ambassadors for free.
Additionally some lead up events such as the main launch event for the entire organization have accepted free accommodation and food donated by partner organizations to help with costs.
Community participation and collaboration:
Explain if and how your target community has been involved in shaping this project as well as the general work of your organization. What is the community’s role in this project? How do you plan to collaborate with organizations?
The target community has been involved in shaping this project firstly in terms of analyzing the situation, as our survey on youth sexual health has been distributed amongst the people we hope to benefit – the results of our survey will help to shape the project as it will help us to identify what we need to work on in particular.
The community has a pivotal role in the project as this project runs on the ethos of recruiting and training young people from the community we hope to benefit to act as sexual health educators and advisors amongst their peers.
We plan to collaborate with other local sexual health organizations for medical help; as where we provide a personal service to the young people we help, there may be medical help that will be best delivered by the health professionals, who we will occasionally ask to feature in drop in sessions in addition to the usual Friday lunchtime advice sessions. We are also collaborating with organizations such as Taking It Global for advice and technical support in running the project.
Innovation: Please give a description of why your project is different from other projects. Please indicate how the new ideas, methods or technologies you are using will add value to the project.
Youth S.H.A.G/GF40 tackles sexual health related problems through consulting with young people across the globe on related issues, getting to the roots of the issues and then providing solutions and answers to combat these problems, mainly through creating and developing peer led educative programmes, campaigns and interactive tools.
Our programmes are designed to fit the needs and requirements of the specific topic at hand, we take advice from outside organisations and consult with leading global facilitators to ensure the young people were working with, are given the best possible learning experience - most of all they're designed to be fun, creative and energetic. We are also making effective use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and creating an I-phone application in addition to traditional methods of sexual health advice to make the issues even more relevant and accessible to this generation of young people.
The Youth S.H.A.G./GF40 project I am working on in Portsmouth is different as it deals with the emotions involved in sex and relationships, making it more relatable to young people who have expressed their views that all sexual health advice they receive is too scientific and impersonal.
Project Outcome: Please give a short description of the immediate outcomes of your project. The outcomes are the effects or changes that your project intends to bring about among the target group or in the community.
The immediate outcome is that it will empower young people to become leading authorities on sexual health in their own communities. They in turn will provide immediate access to their peers on issues of sexual health.
Project Sustainability: Please give a description of how the project will continue to operate and maintain the project gains.
The project will continue to operate as it runs on a self sustaining model, whereby once we have trained our first 25 ambassadors, they will essentially be taking the lead role in carrying out main activity of the project (acting as peer to peer sexual health advisors). Once the first year of the project is done, we will teach these ambassadors how to then train new ambassadors at their schools in the same vein. This core action of this scheme can continue for years with few costs involved as it merely requires young people educating each other in presenting and basic sexual health advice, and using their facilities at their schools to run advisory sessions.
Partnership/Stakeholders: Please give a description of how you plan to involve the local government, private enterprises, youth groups, faith based organizations or other non-governmental organizations in the project and how their participation will add value to the project.
Local government-Should the project be successful we can lobby the local government to shape policy on sexual health education so that it is delivered differently throughout the country. Also the support of the local government will allow us to then spread our project to more than just the 3 schools in the area.
Youth Groups – Will be helpful in thinking of creative ways we can deliver our training so that it is motivating for the young ambassadors.
Local sexual health organizations – vital for offering us statistics about teenage pregnancy rates in the area, and will be an important partner in terms of allowing us to work with volunteer health professionals who can drop into schools to offer health related advice at the Friday lunch sessions. We will also need their addresses at hand should any young person need medical advice.
Local businesses – essential for funding the project, such as supplying us with goods that we can auction to raise money.
Funders – will be vital for offering technical support in terms of implementing the project, how to train the ambassadors as well as opening us up to more networks.
Communication and Sharing: How will you share the project outcome and prevent duplication of efforts by others?
I will document every step involved in the project implementing and running purpose on a blog on the GF40 website will be publicized through our extensive networks including Global Changemakers and The British Youth Council as well as various sexual health organization networks such as the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS. We will be working with a large number of partners who will be fully aware of our work on both a global scale (such as TIG) and on a local scale such as Portsmouth Primary Care Trust.
Project management Structure: What is your project management structure? Who will do what? Clearly outline the project team structure and how you will ensure transparency and accountability during the project implementation phase?
Executive Directors: They are responsible for approving and overseeing all programmes of GF40 and steering the direction of the organization.
Outreach Coordinator: Is responsible for galvanizing action from the sexual health ambassadors, involved in ambassador training, overseeing how they are working and keeping the community interested in the project by remaining in close contact with them.
Events and Fundraising Coordinator: responsible for coming up with fundraising ideas and organizing events to raise more money for the projects. They are also responsible for applying for writing and submitting funding forms.
Media and Communications Officer: Responsible for writing press releases and forming and building links with media partners to explore the potential for sponsorship, funding and long term projects.
Finance Officer: Responsible for ensuring the financial sustainability of GF40, creation of financial procedures, creation of budgets and oversight of spending by both team members and the organisation as a whole (e.g. expenses, petty cash).
Transparency and accountability will be ensured by weekly team meetings where the assistant to the Executive Directors will write the minutes. Each member of the team will have weekly evaluation forms to fill out throughout the week, detailing their actions and what they have achieved within the week. The completed evaluation forms will then be shared amongst the team at the weekly meetings.
Mobilizing Support: How will you mobilize local support for your project? How will you convince others to work with you on this project? How will you include others in making a change?
Support of Schools – The support of schools is the most important thing in implementing this project as we hope to recruit young people to act as sexual health ambassadors for their own schools where they will run advice sessions for their peers at their schools. So support will be needed from Headmasters and school staff to get the go ahead. This will be done by the Communications officer from February – April 2011, contacting the Headmasters firstly by phone and email, then arranging an appointment with the Headmasters in April where the Outreach Coordinator will argue for the importance of a personalized peer to peer sexual health advice service that is immediately accessible by other young people, the argument will be backed up by a report which I will present showing the views of young people in the community on what is needed in terms of sexual health advice.
Enthusiasm of Young Ambassadors – As we are all young people managing this project, we will be able to relate to other young people also wanting to affect change. We will enthuse the young ambassadors by firstly promising them a certificate and fantastic CV opportunity when we are advertising for the role. Once recruited we will train them in a fun manner so that they truly enjoy their role and are fully confident in it.
Local Government – I will organize a meeting with my MP in August 2011 who I am sure will see the potential of this project, especially as it is run by young people and I will ask him to endorse it fully, perhaps by releasing a statement about it on his website.
Media – The Media and Communications officer will get in touch with the local media to publish a positive report on the project, to get more people interested in it and to support it as the project launches in schools in September 2011.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
Objective1:
To have a training event in August 2011 which will gather 25 student ambassadors from different schools in Portsmouth district who will be trained to act as a sexual health advisors in their schools.
Indicators of achievement:
•The number of students who complete the training session.
•The number of students who continue to act as sexual health ambassadors in their schools throughout academic year 2010-2011
Means of verification:
Throughout the training event, a register will be taken to mark the students attendance; additionally statements will be taken from participants about what they gained from attending training at the end of training.
To monitor the number of students who continue to use their skills in their schools throughout the year, statements will be taken from the students about the project and its impact every 3 months after training until the end of the year. Additionally statements will be taken from the Headmasters of the schools to monitor progress of the ambassadors every 3 months until the end of the year.
Objective2:
Receive offers of interest from other schools after publishing an article/report about the project in the local newspaper/TV news station.
Indicators of achievement:
• A published story in the newspaper/a TV news report about the Youth Sexual Health Advocacy and Guidance project in Portsmouth
• The number of head teachers/teachers/students of other schools that read about this and contact us to implement the project in their schools
Means of verification:
A copy of the published newspaper/recording of TV news report will be kept by our Media Officer. The Outreach Coordinator will be corresponding with the interested parties, monitoring the letters, emails and calls from those who have read the article.
Challenges:
As this project relies on young people (aged 15-20) to act as mentors in their own communities, they face the challenge of juggling this role with their school or college timetables, so it will be challenging to find individuals who are committed and organised enough to take on the role and achieve the project aims within a given timescale.
Cultural attitudes among young people in the UK are hard to shift, not necessarily attitudes towards sex, but young people here lack willingness to take those who are trying to teach them seriously. So the young people who we aim to educate may not cooperate with or listen to us. We may try and teach the young people using fun fresh approaches such as group games but even so we must be careful not to patronize them. Some young people may not want to give up their time for this project.
Additionally parents have an overriding influence on their children, so if there are children that have parents who have strong attitudes about sexual health (or rather, the lack of it), it will be harder to make an influence on these young people.
As the core team I will be working with are all volunteers (not being paid), sometimes it will be hard to motivate them to do their work on time in an organised manner. The same applies to the student sexual health ambassadors I will be training. The most important thing is the behaviour and attitudes of the ambassadors as I am relying on them to act as effective representatives at each of their schools to create a real effect. This is why the selection process must be rigorous to find enthusiastic self motivated individuals with good references, additionally I will carefully be monitoring their progress, though as I will not be around all the time it will be difficult to know how effective they are sometimes.
Financial Management Principles:
There will not solely be one person responsible for finances. There will be a Finance Officer; however any financial transactions they prepare must be reviewed by the Executive Directors. There will also be a Fundraising Officer who will collaborate closely with the Finance officer; however the role of the fundraising officer will primarily involve researching and submitting funding applications to trusts as well as managing fundraising events.
The finance officer will record all incoming cheques and cash and ensures the security of these until they are banked. They will ensure the financial sustainability of GF40 by maintaining up to date records of all assets and creating budgets. The finance officer will oversee spending by both team members and the organisation as a whole. So they will manage a petty cash float subject to cash count and checks by the executive directors whenever a top up is asked for. They will be keeping record of all receipts, signatures etc to manage funds, all team members will be responsible for handing in their receipts and signing off their expenses in an expenses book.
Fundraising:
As this project is part of the overall Youth Sexual Health Advocacy and Guidance (GF40) initiative, the core team will be working on a variety of events and applying for funding from several organizations to raise the required funds for both our global and UK based projects.
On World AIDS Day in December 2010 we will be holding a comedy fundraiser event, for which we are about to start selling tickets at £20 each. We have contacted and confirmed the comedians that will perform that night and we have contacted local businesses to donate gift baskets that we can auction on the night to raise further money. We are also applying for grants from various organizations including Global Changemakers who have awarded us £5000. Additionally as Outreach Coordinator, I will be galvanizing our supporters to hold their own fundraising events to help us raise money for the project.
