Haramaya University Women, Children and Youth Affairs Directorate provided primary school students with life skills and reproductive health training on December 29, 2021.
In her opening speech, Kedija Abdulkadir, HrU Women, Children and Youth Affairs Directorate Director, said that while the training mainly focuses on life skills and reproductive health, it has been prepared for 113 female students who come from ten different schools in Haramaya Woreda.
According to Kedija, the overall objective of the training is to raise the awareness of female students about the physical and hormonal changes that appear in adolescence age. She added that the training also will increase their awareness about the menstruation and menstruation management without dropping class. As a result, the training could help female students not only to keep themselves healthy but also to increase their educational competency.
Feyisa Fikadu, senior professional nurse at Haramaya University higher Health Station, said that this training gives a wide range of information on reproductive health, prevention of infectious diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
The Life Skills Trainer and a lecturer at Haramaya University College of law Urgi Biso on her part explained that Life Skills Training may help students to set a vision, a goal and enable them to achieve their goals.
The school teachers explained that the way they treated their students during menstruation has some negative impact on students’ competitiveness. Alfiya, a teacher from Lege Anbo Elementary School affirms “Our female students had previously dropped out of school because they were afraid of Menstruation and lost their self-confidence. But recently efforts are being made to solve the problem with the training and budget support provided by the different institutions like Haramaya University.”
Fakiya Abrahim, is another teacher and vice-principal from Adele Elementary School. She had been trained at Haramaya University for three months by Women’s Empowerment Project and acquired basic knowledge to equip students with life skills and reproductive health education. She says that the knowledge she gained from the training has helped her a lot to guide female students in school about how to protect themselves from unwonted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and to manage themselves during Menstruation. Such awareness creation training should be appreciated, said Teacher Fakiya.
At the end of the training, Participating students some of whom are Seudiya Bule from Adele, Olane Ahemed from Legambo, and Rihana Jemal from Tinike Elementary School said that they have learned from the training how to take precautions to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, and how to manage Menstruation during school time.