Impact through Peers Project Update

By Josephine De Freitas

The Impact Through Peers Project Peer Group Club in Mbarara Secondary School in one of their meetings preparing for rehearsals being addressed by the group chairperson.

Impact Through Peers Project has established and operationalised Peer Group Clubs in six secondary schools. The Peer Group Club in Mbarara Secondary School has fourty five members and under the supervision of the Peer Group Trainers has designed a play entitled ‘The Disappointment’, and has presented the play to students in other schools. The play tells a story of a senior three male student who hails from a rich family, who enters into an intimate relationship with a senior one female student as a result of peer pressure. The play has a sad ending that tells a story of how the boy’s family gets disappointed when they discover that he has contracted HIV from the young girl who got infected through mother to child transmission of HIV. This has been popular with the Students and has helped facilitate conversations on these subjects.

“With the health education skills I acquired from HEADA Uganda’s training, I have been able to influence my fellow students to change for the better and this makes me feel very important and this has inspired me to become a medical Doctor in future so that I can continue to help adolescents access the right reproductive health information” -Chairperson of the Peer Group Club at Mbarara S.S

The students are now going for holidays and will return to school when the term opens in September 2012 and we believe the information they have received will help them to stay safe and smart during the holiday until next term during which we plan to construct tippy taps and hold an exhibition during which the different Peer Group Clubs will showcase their activities before the judges and the best club will be awarded a prize.

This project is ending this year and we are thankful to HMEF of Rose Charities Canada for the continued support. We would welcome support to enable us scale up this project to other schools in South Western Uganda.

If you would like to help this project expand, please make a donation to Rose Charities Canada, through Canada Helps via the link below. Please select “The Hillman Fund” from the drop down menu.