HIV Prevention Education in Secondary Schools

World Education's Bantwana Initiative is working with the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), UNICEF, and UNESCO to support the launch of a national curriculum for HIV prevention, marking it the first government-supported national effort to provide HIV prevention information to secondary school students in Swaziland. The HIV prevention curriculum is part of a broader Guidance and Counselling Programme being piloted in 24 Swazi secondary schools. The program is geared to help adolescents acquire important life skills, including information about HIV infection and what they can do to prevent transmission.

With funding from UNICEF and Open Society Institute for Southern Africa, Bantwana is undertaking the following activities:

• Supporting Swaziland’s National Curriculum Center (NCC) to develop age-appropriate, learner centered teaching materials for the Guidance and Counselling Programme, with a focus on HIV prevention information
• Training MoET staff to conduct teacher training to be able to deliver the Guidance and Counselling Programme effectively in their classrooms
• Supporting the MoET to develop and utilize monitoring and evaluation tools to measure the success of the pilot exercise
• Conducting community sensitization activities to prepare parents and community leaders and obtain their support for the program