Training Parents on Adolescent Sexuality & Reproductive Health --- Connections Training of Trainers Workshop

UNESCO Beijing Office and China Family Planning Association (CFPA) are running a Connections Training of Trainers Workshop “Training Parents on Adolescent Sexuality & Reproductive Health” this week in Beijing (from July 1 to July 4). A total of 55 representatives, mainly adolescent sexual and reproductive health trainers of provincial-level Family Planning Associations, are participating in this training. Dr Helen Cahill of the Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne, has been invited to lead the delivery of the workshop with support from national facilitators.

The purpose of the workshop is to build capacity of local organisations in training parents on how to communicate with and educate their children on sexuality and reproduction-related issues. The workshop is the result of a common realization between UNESCO Beijing Office and CFPA of the import role that parents could play in providing sexuality education to their children.

After a decade of efforts on providing training to adolescents on sexual and reproductive health, CFPA is now looking forward to including parents in their programme. UNESCO Beijing Office is also aiming to expand its work beyond promoting school-based sexuality education in China. Hence UNESCO Beijing Office and CFPA has forged a partnership in implementing the ‘Creating Connections’ programme in China over the next couple of years to demonstrate a model of training that benefits both parents and adolescents in China.

The ‘Creating Connections’ program was first developed by Dr. Helen Cahill, with contributions from Dr Tu Anh Hoang, Director of Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population, Viet Nam. Following promising evaluation results from the Vietnam pilot study, regional UNICEF, UNESCO and UNFPA offices invested in a refinement of materials and the expansion of the programme into several countries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam.