Sharing innovations from the Covid-19 crisis to improve sexuality education access online Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sharing innovations from the Covid-19 crisis to improve sexuality education access online

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Inclusion – equity; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

We are a consortium of some of the region’s leading organisations working on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). We all focus on reaching marginalized and underserved young people, and we normally rely on face-to-face contact to deliver comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). The Covid-19 crisis has forced all of us to change how we work radically in a short space of time and all SRHR organisations are facing challenges in the provision of services and information. Coordinated by YSAFE, the youth network of International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF EN), our project aims to capture what we are all learning under lockdown about moving our educational activities online and make this available to other organizations.

Many members of our network are already using digital methods to support CSE delivery, and an emerging literature does exist on requirements for designing quality online CSE under normal circumstances. However, prior to our project, there are still no resources published on how organisations reliant on face-to-face CSE delivery might maximise their existing tools to shift to online working cheaply and quickly.

Our objectives are therefore

1) To create and disseminate set of guidelines on delivering CSE online, which will help organisations move online to overcome challenges where face-to-face delivery has been blocked and support their improvement of youth-friendly online reach even during normal operating.

2) To raise the capacities of young youth workers from 8 organizations to pilot the use of the guidelines in designing and delivering online educational activities

A core group of 16 young peer sexuality educators and youth worker staff attached to YSAFE, seven national members of IPPF EN, and the End FGM European Network will come together to share good practices and key learnings from their experiments in moving educational activities online. Together we will draft a 50-page document that draws on our experiences and the most recent UNESCO and WHO guidance to provide practical advice on:

(1) delivering urgent key messages in an acute situation that blocks in-person work, including
• assessing the most relevant needs in an urgent situation;
• making use of existing social media channels to deliver concise educational messages;
• appropriate branding and visual content creation for online campaigns
• reframing messages for specific audiences/contexts

(2) delivering ‘live action” CSE online, to expand an organisation’s existing offer and increasing reach in a sustainable way, including
• adapting existing CSE workshop plans for delivery through video platforms
• using online work to bridge the gaps between those who are currently being served and those who are not

Once the guidance is drafted we will offer training and support a further 45 young participants to test it out through delivering their own action plans for online peer-led educational activities. These will be on the theme of sexual and gender-based violence to build on YSAFE’s continuing work on prevention among marginalized youth and activities will be connected to thematically relevant international calendar events, such as the 16 Days of Activism and International Women’s Day. The action plans will include “live” CSE sessions on video platforms as well as activities run using their existing social media channels, to test out the youth-friendliness and usability of both areas treated by our new guidelines document. We expect to reach 250,000 young people during the implementation of their online activities.

We expect the guidelines to be of use to any organization looking to reach youth online with rights-based educational content when in-person delivery is not possible, thus maintaining the benefits of CSE to their personal development, health and wellbeing and reducing the disruption to this aspect of young people’s education. For all organisations, SRHR or otherwise, the guidelines will have relevance both in crisis situations – the continuation of Covid-19 lockdowns, for example, or national events that cause a breakdown in normal educational access – and also in regular operating times, when it can be used to increase online work to reach more youth. The possibilities for using online methods of education to reach specifically marginalized young people with CSE to counteract their marginalization has been recognized by the major actors in our field, noting that digital interventions can reach populations missed by other forms of education. We therefore expect the guidelines to impact positively an organisation’s reach to those who are marginalized and/or underserved.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 101716,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

INTERNATIONAL PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION EUROPEAN NETWORK & Country: BE

Project Partners

• END FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION-EUROPEAN NETWORK
• KYPRIAKOS SYNDESMOS OIKOGENEIAKOU PROGRAMMATISMOU
• Estonian Sexual Health Association
• H.E.R.A. – Health Education and Research Association
• Associação para o Planeamento da Família
• PAPARDES ZIEDS
• FEDERACION DE PLANIFICACION FAMILIAR ESTATAL