The Adolescent HIV Prevention Campaign is Much more than distributing condoms to kids

The Adolescent HIV Prevention Campaign is much more than distributing condoms to kids

 About two years ago I participated in a national stakeholders’ workshop reviewing a school-based HIV prevention curriculum. Religious leaders, teachers, officials from ministries of education and health, and representatives of NGOs, were charged with the responsibility of tailoring the curriculum content to suit the Kenyan “values and morals”—a very challenging task in deed. I was quite saddened at the time by the resistance from stakeholders against any mention of the word condom, or anything considered vulgar such as defining sexual intercourse as the “insertion of a man’s penis into a woman’s vagina.” Stakeholders put to task those of us who had drafted the curriculum to explain why we wanted to corrupt the innocent minds of Kenyan children, with foreign American concepts. I was saddened but not surprised by these sentiments. I had gone through the same experience trying to introduce life skills sessions to schools in Nyanza Province back in 2005.