It is at household and community level that you can reach young people who do not go to school including those who are married. From the survey that you conducted, you already have the number of young people in your community. In addition to categorising them by age (10–14, 15–19, 20–24), it is now advisable to categorise them by marital status in order to tailor your messages to the specific groups. Therefore it is important that you have specific household and community level interventions for this group of young people. At household level, when you plan a household visit for other health activities it is a good idea to integrate reproductive health-related activities and address them in each household where there are young people.

Once you have the different categories of young people by age and sex, you can form peer groups. First you must train the peer educators . The groups meet for regular sessions: maybe every two weeks or every month depending on how often they wish to discuss issues of concern to them. You will be the resource person when needed. As each peer group is likely to require your assistance at some point, it is good idea if you develop a plan for peer education related activities.

To be able to plan support activities and assess their effectiveness you need the following information:

  1. The number of peer education groups in the community
  2. The number of peer members in each group
  3. The number of sessions each group conducted during the quarter
  4. The topics they covered in the peer education sessions.

Try to ensure that the peer groups do have similar characteristics, like married girls in one group; unmarried in another group.

If you follow the five steps when setting up AYFRH services at your health facility you will be able to improve the sexual and reproductive health of the young people in your community.

Last modified: Tuesday, 1 July 2014, 3:15 PM