#PEA2017 Newsletter #1

#PEA2017 Weekly Newsletter | Issue #1

Our 4th Peer Educators Academy class is on and we won’t keep calm because we’re just getting started on this! We have been blessed with young people and adolescents ready to be change agents by going through our life changing Academy. You missed out? Worry not, Tag along as we unveil what went down in our first week of the 4th Peer Educators Academy class from Wednesday 4th Jan -

#PEA 2017 We started off with the conversational introductions, after which the participants stated their expectations of the academy led by Bakshi Asuman, our Programs Manager SRHR & Implementation. He then ran participants through the selection of the Academy leaders, where participants Martha Nimurungi and Richard Ngobya were chosen as team leaders.

Amon Mulyowa the Peer Educators Academy lead facilitator, took charge after tasking the participants to form random groups.

Teams formed by participants themselves were #Bondo , Mul!Ro, Sticklers, Real Steppers and Raids. Each group was assigned a mentor from RAHU staff. As the session was getting heated up, a pre-assessment test was given to test the participants on their level of understanding towards SRHR and behavioral change headed by Andinda Maureen our M&E manager.

DAY 01

w e e k ly n e w s l e t t e r

January 4th - 10th

Tuesday 10th Jan. 2017.

Humphrey Nabimanya, our Team Leader then officially welcomed the participants to the academy and giving them a brief explanation of what RAHU is about and the purpose of the Peer Educators Academy. He challenged the young people by asking them their goals and encouraging them to champion the change they desire especially when it comes to SRHR as he closed the session

DAY 02 Day 2 was focused on Active Listening Techniques and Behavioral change led by Amon to equip the participants with listening skills they will be using while communicating with their peers. The loopholes of the communication were then unearthed in the session, and ways to evade them like closer attention, audibility, and less message channels were implemented.

Bakshi later took charge of the day and ran the class through behavior change. He tasked the teams to come up with illustrations of the different environments/communities that they are familiar and discuss the determinants and

risk groups of behavior change as regards to SRHR. He then rounded up the session by asking the participants to note down their evaluation of the day.

DAY 03 awareness, interest, trial, to adoption and advocacy. He also took the participants through characteristics of change among others.

We continued with behavior change lessons on day 4.

Bakshi welcomed various questions from the participants on the topic, before tasking them to work in their different groups to answer questions on the determinants of behavior change among various stakeholders.

Later, groups presented their findings which formed part of the discussion after. Humphrey then took the floor and took the participants through the Reach A Hand, Uganda life journey. The day was then wrapped up with an inspirational video of previous years peer educators who have benefited from the program and have gone on to be change agents in their communities.

Gender Roles and Gender Based Violence (GBV) were the topics of the day. Participants were separated into two groups as per their sex with each group tasked to discuss a day in the life of the opposite sex.. The facilitator took them through a rigorous discussion on gender, how society understands it and what expectations arise out of it.

Later, Bakshi took the participants through a session on GBV. The session resulted into a heated argument especially when the question of men suffering from violence at the hands of women arose. The day was then concluded with the participants jotting down their suggestions on how they thought the session went and how to make the next one better.

For more information about the Peer Educators Academy 2017, please visit our websites www.sautiplus.org and www.reachahand.org or follow us on our social media platforms; on Faceboook at www.facebook.com/reachahand or www.facebook.com/sautiplus, Twitter @REACHAHAND and join the hashtag #PEA2017

DAY 05

DAY 04

To be a peer educator, one must be able to impact change to the community and that brought us to the day’s topic, Behavioral Change. The facilitator Amon Mulyowa discussed the different stages of behavioral change from

Amon also gave practical life situations and asked the participants to tell the different stages of behavior change the people in his examples were at? The day was wrapped up with a vigorous dance session that got everyone both excited and exhausted.