A PILOT education package tailor-made to educate secondary students about AIDS will be launched in secondary schools later this term.
The 'HIV/AIDS School Awareness Programme', developed by the youth-oriented volunteer agency Teen AIDS, will initially be tested by three local and three international schools for one school term.
The project is backed with $550,000 from the AIDS Trust Fund and includes teacher training. Teen AIDS organised a workshop for teachers of the participating schools last month to equip them with the necessary skills to implement the programme (see page 3).
'Adults have often been targeted for behavioural modifications. More should be done with the younger generation, especially those between 10 and 14 years old,' said Ann Anglim, one of the founders of Teen AIDS who initiated the school programme.
'Students have the right to knowledge about HIV and AIDS. We should be pro-active and educate them now rather than waiting after they make mistakes and become statistics.' The package, which mainly consists of a set of work sheets on 10 topics that help students to explore the self and others, adopts a lively learning approach, Ms Anglim said.
'We don't give lectures nor encourage rote learning,' she said. 'Our aim is to engage youths in active experiential learning.' Teen AIDS director Atty Lai said the focus of the material is not solely on AIDS.
'Our approach is holistic. We begin with topics like self-esteem, inter-personal relationship and decision making before leading to the question of sex and AIDS education.' The package also features information posters, videos and a teacher's resource manual in English.
