Home Projects Closed: Youth Sexual Health Education
Projects
Youth Sexual Health Education in Collaboration with Local Level Actors (EU, Interreg IIIA) PDF Print E-mail

Youht Sexual Health Education in Collaboration with Local Level Actors - Nuorten seksuaaliterveyden edistäminen paikallistason yhteistyönä - Noorte seksuaaltervise edendamine kohaliku omavalitsuse ja kolmanda sekstori koostöös

Young people need information regarding sexual health that helps them to acquire accurate information, develop life skills, positive attitudes and values. Youth start to be interested in sex and the issues about sex and sexuality in younger age than earlier. E.g. the popular culture emphasized by sex and sexuality affect on it.

Amount of the infections of some sexually transmitted diseases have increased both in Finland and Estonia among young people. For example, in Finland the Chlamydia infections have had a growing trend during last five years (KTL 2006). In Estonia about half of new registered HIV-infections have been among young people during last few years (TAI 2007).

The project aims to affect these phenomena by means of health promotion and preventive work. The existing know-how and materials about the sexual health promotion of young people is collected. Ba-sed on this, the needed and missing material will be developed in the project by the cross-sectoral group of local experts. The cross-border collaboration supports this core group to develop the material. The project offers information and platform to change the experiences to people who work with young people on the field of sexual health education. The concrete activities of the project are cross-boarder gatherings, visits and seminars.

Main goals of the project

  1. to map and collect existing know-how and materials about youth sexual health promotion and further develop material as a collaboration by a network of local experts
  2. to increase the means of those working with youth on both preventing sexually transmitted diseases and decreasing discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS

Goals of the project

  1. to exchange the knowledge about sexual health promotion between the experts
  2. to increase the skills of the people work with youth about sexual health promotion
  3. application of the working methods used in Finland and Estonia regarding youth sexual health education
  4. development and promotion of participatory and communicative working methods in youth sexual health education as part of HIV/AIDS prevention.

As a result of the project the knowledge of the sexual health promotion and skills to distribute the information regarding sexual health will be increased among school nurses, teachers and NGOs working with young people in the participating municipalities. Sexual health education will have an important role in education of young people. The cooperation between different sectors will be stronger. Also the skills for national and international level cooperation and changing of experiences about youth sexual health education will be easier and stronger among participating partners.

Long run outcomes of the project

  1. school personnel and nurses have in use appropriate knowledge and means to promote sexual health, which leads to the decreasing of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-infections,
  2. up-to-date knowledge and right attitudes among young people are increased and that leads to healthy sexual behaviour
  3. the discrimination of HIV-positive people and people living with AIDS is to be diminished.

 

KTL 2006. Tartuntataudit Suomessa 2005.
TAI 2007. HIV and AIDS in Figures 2006. Kristi Rüütel, Liilia Lõhmus. National Institute for Health Development.

 

The project is co-financed by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the State Provincial Office of Western Finland. It is running in South Finland and Estonia Interreg IIIA –programme.
 
Last Updated on Thursday, 12 June 2008 15:27