This weekend, ACTS traveled to St. Barnabas Anyiko Mixed Secondary School in the New Gem District to conduct another Peer Counseling Training Seminar. Anyiko Secondary is a mixed day school, so we trained 39 students, 20 boys and 19 girls, as peer counsellors. 8 teachers participated in the entire program and thus received certification as well.
We had a very successful weekend of training, and felt that we were able to impart the skills to the participants successfully. We felt that there was a great receptivity to our sessions--the children and teachers were very involved and proactive in the training. The students participated in high numbers as they willingly offered up their own experiences as material for counselling intervention training.
The principal of Anyiko was especially interactive with our program, and brought up a tragic incident that had occurred at the beginning of the term, when one of the students had been brutally murdered by a group of boys from the town. He used this not only as an example to describe the issues that affect the youth of the New Gem District, but to illustrate the necessity of trained peer counsellors to offer support to a grieving school body.
The participants themselves were very open in sharing their own struggles against drug and substance abuse, negative peer influence including unhealthy familial, fraternal, and romantic relationships, excessive physical violence, the great number of school dropouts of girls due to pregnancy, and parental neglect and lack of guidance in issues of academics, social life, and sexuality.
Our program administrators reported an especially productive session exploring issues of sexuality. Most Kenyan children do not get sex-ed as part of their schooling, so the guidence ACTS is able to provide considering issues of sexuality, dating, teen pregnancies, and STI's is very valuable for not only the students at Anyiko, but at all secondary schools in Kenya.
ACTS encouraged the school administration to create forums for the students to interact with both men and women role models who have been successful in achieving their academic and social goals. Due to limits on funds at Anyiko, the students rarely get to go on field trips to attend seminars and conferences outside of the New Gem District. However, it only costs a minimum amount of money to invite a volunteer speaker to come to the school. The principal of the school was very receptive to this idea, and we look forward to seeing what events Anyiko hosts in the future.
As in most schools that ACTS visits, we noticed again that the open forum ACTS provides for students to freely discuss their struggles is embraced eagerly.
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