Hatua’s “Gap year” students finished high school in Nov and are looking forward to join college and university later this year. During their time out of school we help our students learn new skills through community service. This year our gap year students are teaching HIV education to secondary school students throughout Mombasa are part of TOWA (Total War Against AIDS), a behaviour change communication project funded by the Kenyan National AIDS Control Council.
Twelve Hatua students are participating in TOWA as peer educators. They began
their work in December by being trained as HIV peer educators and by creating an original play depicting the consequences of unsafe sex.
Since Jan our students have presented their play and conducted follow up discuss at 37 schools, reaching a total of 9,660 students. This week we’ll visit an additional 3 schools before concluding the project.
While the goal of TOWA is to encourage behaviour change among participants at the schools we visit, our students have told us that being peer educators has helped them to change their own behaviour. In particular they have become confident public speakers, able to act and talk in front of a crowd of hundreds of peers. “Before joining TOWA project, I was very shy and could not talk publicly, but after visiting several schools and being one of the peer educators, I had to talk publicly and now I’m glad that I can speak confidently in front of a crowd of people” says Cynthia Kwamboka, a Hatua student.
Next year we hope to conduct a school outreach program in partnership with Save the Children teaching financial literacy skills.
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