Using sport to educate about sexual health at Umoja
Our Sport and Sexual Health Project supports 3 organisations in Arusha to teach young people about sexual health through sport.
One of these organisations is Umoja Tanzania, an NGO providing a year-long education programme to help young people get back into education, employment or training.
Our programme manager worked with staff and students at Umoja to introduce the project, teaching them simple games to convey sexual health messages, such as the importance of waiting until the right time to have sex, condom use, the risk of HIV and not giving into pressure to take part in risky behaviour.
Spreading the word
We then taught young people how to teach these messages to others, becoming peer leaders so they could go into other schools and introduce the games – increasing the project’s reach and making it more sustainable.
4 of the young people from Umoja who took part – pictured above – share their experiences below.
Making a difference
- ‘I feel more confident about dealing with the challenges I face in day to day life, about choosing the right time to have sex.’
- ‘I know more about my health, how to avoid HIV and use a condom.’
- ‘Learning these health messages through games helped information stay in my memory, better than learning in a class room.’
- ‘Doing the outreach was challenging as some of the young people were older than me and at first did not respect me. I told them I was there to teach them and although I was younger they should respect me. After that they listened.’
- ‘At the other school the young people did not always follow my instructions. I learnt to stay calm and explain to them again what I needed them to do, this helped them understand.’
- ‘I have gained more confidence by learning about these games and how to teach others.’
- ‘I told my little brother about the importance of using a condom to avoid HIV.’
- ‘I talked to my friends about some of the things I had learnt, although without the games it was difficult for them to understand.’
We are delighted that this project is having such an impact on young people in Arusha and will continue to monitor and evaluate its performance over the next 6 months.
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