Youth Work
Roots Of Health recognizes the need for youth-centered programming, and we have an entire team dedicated to young people and education. Our main objectives are to reduce unplanned teen pregnancy and youth HIV infection in Palawan.
We aim to do this through empowering students with knowledge about their bodies, reproductive health and systems, relationships and pregnancy.
High Schools
Providing reproductive health education to high school students is one of the primary missions of Roots of Health. We aim to provide students with the lifelong tools to make informed decisions about contraceptives, safe sex, and their right to make their own reproductive health decisions.
Despite the passage of the Reproductive Health Law in 2014 and its mandate to provide age-appropriate sex education in schools, public high schools in Palawan do not provide any sexuality or sexual health or reproductive health education.
We fill this critical gap with our programming.
Our Youth Team teaches three main comprehensive sexuality education modules in public and private high-schools and colleges across Palawan. Our modules include: puberty for grades 7 and 8, reproductive health for grades 9 and 10, and HIV/AIDS for grades 11 and 12.
We design lessons to create safe and supportive classroom environments that nurture reproductive health education for a range of education needs.
Palawan has one of the highest teen pregnancy and HIV infection rates in the country. Armed with knowledge, young people can avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections such as HIV.
They can take responsibility for their own reproductive lives, finish high school, and lead productive lives.
Colleges
Many students who are in college have yet to receive any formal reproductive or sexual health education. Moreover, these same students lack access to comprehensive sexuality education or to high quality, free clinical services. We teach college students in Palawan about the basics of reproductive health, with a focus on pregnancy prevention and the reduction of HIV infection. We also provide information about and access to our free clinic and free clinical services to college students.
We conduct both classes and seminars on reproductive health, including healthy relationships, dealing with peer pressure, making informed decisions about when to enter into sexual relationships, and the basics of contraception, pregnancy, STIs, and other related topics. In addition to student seminars, we conduct teacher trainings in order to present our curriculum to teachers and provide guidance on how to effectively discuss health and empowerment with their students. Finally, we provide a student hotline that students can text with relationship and health questions.
Without education, people will continue to believe in what they think is right without realizing that it is wrong.
And without services, young people will not be able to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies, STIs and the worsening HIV situation.
Allana, Youth Advocate
Youth Advocates
We train Youth Advocates to help empower change from within their community and to help students take initiative in addressing their own sexual health. Youth Advocates are students that help to provide reproductive health information to their peers, hand out condoms, and make referrals to our clinic for services. We rely on our Youth Advocates to keep a pulse on the reproductive health needs of their peers to ensure that we provide youth-centered and youth-friendly services and information. We have found that young people in Palawan are most receptive to receiving information about taboo topics from someone their same age and from someone who can empathize with their challenges.
We have seen positive results by encouraging young people to motivate others to take positive action to protect their futures.
1,184
Number of referrals for contraceptives and HIV testing services in 2017
8,000<
Number of young people impacted by our youth advocates
