During this year’s remarkably hot summer, we have been working on the make-over of the Health[e]Living e-learning course. The Health[e]Living program targets community workers and educators who work with adolescents and guides them in providing basic health, life skills and sexual and reproductive health and rights education using an experiential learning approach.
Initially, the course was developed for training in Cambodia and Thailand in 2011, it was adapted in 2015 to train community workers and educators in South Africa and in 2016 we brought Health[e]Living to Uganda. Since then, we initiated multiple training groups and we are grateful that the participants shared a lot of constructive feedback to further improve the content of the course. This input, combined with practical experience and new insights in the field of life skills and comprehensive sexuality education served as input for Health[e]Living 2.0.
New modules
The course has been expanded with 2 new modules: ‘Nutrition‘ and ‘Program planning and evaluation‘
The module ‘Nutrition‘ has been written by an expert group of the University of Wageningen, specialized in food (production), living environment, health, lifestyle and livelihood. The module focuses on healthy nutrition for adolescents. As adolescents are becoming more autonomous, they make more independent food choices. Their food choices are heavily influenced by their peers and the food environment. This module discusses, both in general and with a specific focus on young people, the basics of the human digestive system; nutrients; how to eat a balanced and healthy diet and what happens if you do not.
For the module ‘Program planning and evaluation’ we reached out to Sarah Burnett, a US-based senior data analyst, who has over 10 years of experience monitoring & evaluation of global health programs. The module introduces the learner how to effectively use, plan and evaluate the information, methods and materials of the Health[e]Living modules. The Health[e]Living course can be seen as a huge warehouse of valuable and interesting information and activities. The M&E module helps community workers and educators to use this resource in such a way that the information given to and activities done with the adolescents have a successful impact.
Updated modules
The existing modules have had a make-over as well.
The module ‘Sex and gender‘ has been renamed ‘Gender and sexual orientation‘ and rewritten based on the model of the Genderbread person, introduced to us by Ugandan psychologist Lynda Nakalawa, who has regularly shared her expertise during the workshops in Uganda. The Genderbread person, developed by Sam Killermann, explains that gender is an interaction between gender identity, gender expression and biological sex and that sexual identity, a combination of romantic (emotional) attraction and sexual (physical) attraction, is related to it, but not defined by gender.
The module ‘Safe sex‘ added more information to the role of the internet in our relationships. With most people using mobile/smartphones and apps as WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook, Twitter etc. communicating via internet has become something we do on daily basis. Our romantic and sexual relationships are influenced by it.
New pre- and posttest questions
Pre- and posttest have been revised to better reflect the content of the modules.
Did you do the Health[e]Living course before? We invite you to have a look at the new and improved Health[e]Living course via our website www.healthefoundation.eu using your personal Health[e]Foundation login and take the posttests again to see if your knowledge is still up to date.
Feedback is always welcome! Just send an email to Health[e]Living project manager Myrna at myrna@healthefoundation.eu.
Let’s keep learning together!
