Within our zone of intervention, the most contemporary and challenging issue is teen and single mothers’ pregnancies. The number of teen and single moms is increasingly becoming a social problem so that coping with the matter requires enough interveners and specific activities to be carried out.
Despite that the local government and the churches are doing interesting work in the framework of social, emotional, psychological reintegration of teen and single mothers, pregnancy cases are still augmenting. At SOHEDEO – Amahoro Iwacu, we totally support 30 single moms but it’s a pity that 24 among them i.e., 80%, gave birth under the age of 18 years. It’s shocking that among our beneficiaries, there’s someone who’s now 17 years old, her child boy is now 3 years old. Clearly, she got pregnant when she was 13 years old, just to share one of cases we found among our beneficiaries.
Obviously, during exchanges we had with teen and single mothers we support, they testified that they don’t have knowledge about reproductive health. This is unfortunately, the primary cause of their unwanted pregnancies. In the framework of equipping then with elementary knowledge about reproductive health, a training was organized on 22nd December 2023 and happened at the Nyabitekeri sector office in Nyamasheke district.
The following are topics that were taught (all of them are not competent in either French or English, that’s why in this article you will find pictures with explanations in Kinyarwanda):
- The meaning/definition of reproductive health
- Services intended for youth (available at health centers and hospitals, youth centers, school etc.)
- Male and female reproductive health organs (internal and external)
Female and male external genital organs
Internal female genital parts
- What does getting pregnant mean?
- What does menstruation mean/menstrual cycle?
- Hygiene of genital organs,
- Sexually transmitted diseases and symptoms,
- Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Illnesses
Participants to the training were split into groups in order to allow them to discuss among themselves what they know or see on pictures that were distributed before the facilitator explains thoroughly the topic.
Group photo taken after the training
In & for peace