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Description
Bulgaria tops all negative statistics in Europe regarding sexual health of young people, i.e. teenage pregnancy of girls aged 14-19, violence, STIs, etc. The problem is rooted in the lack of health and sexual education in the compulsory school curriculum and the fact that these topics are a taboo at home. The project will fill in the gaps in the knowledge of more than 35000 students aged 12-18 of any social status, ethnicity and religion from across the country to make the right and well-informed decisions about their sexual health and private life. They will learn what to expect in puberty and how to respond, how to avoid pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and sexual abuse, how to resist pressure, defend their positions, say “no” and communicate fully and freely. We will achieve our goal by developing efficient and attractive educational materials: 96 online articles, published in loveguide.bg that is already popular among the target group, 96 videos on the educational YouTube channel LoveGuide with 25К users and 4 packages of lessons, digitalized and uploaded in an e-learning system on 4 main topics: changes in puberty, safe sex, safe and responsible online behaviour and protection from sexual abuse and exploitation. We will organize a pilot course of 4 modules (a total of 8 classes) in 3 schools in Troyan, Pavlikeni and Sofia for 240 students which will be a model of systematic health and sexual education in many other schools. We will have health and sexual education classes in the class teacher’s time with 1300 more students from 8 more settlements in the country. We will carry out 2 large-scale surveys with the children we will work with to measure entry and exit level of knowledge and the social impact of our work. We will hold a powerful communication and advertising campaign to reach a maximum number of people from the target group and the general public.
Summary of project results
The project aimed to fill the knowledge gaps of 35,000 average students, of all social status, ethnicities and religions, from across the country, aged between 12 and 18:
- to be able to make the right and well-informed decisions about their sexual health and personal life;
- to know what awaits them at puberty and how to react, how to prevent pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and sexual violence, how to resist pressure, defend their positions, say ''No'' and communicate with each other fully and free;
- to unmistakably recognize the risk factors and behaviors from which they would suffer and how to avoid these situations.
Effective and attractive educational materials were developed within the project: 123 online articles published on the already successful site among the target group loveguide.bg with 377 different advertising campaigns in Google AddWords by keywords and 342,075 users of the site, who read a total of 621,104 pages, 96 videos in the educational YouTube channel LoveGuide with views over 4,400,000 and with new subscribers over 21,600, and 4 packages of digitized and uploaded in e-learning system lessons on 4 main topics: changes in puberty, safe sex, safe and responsible online behavior, and prevention of sexual violence and exploitation.
The pilot school program was implemented for 79 students in Sofia and 65 students in Troyan. Apart from them, a total of 57 classes on "Health and Sex Education" were held for 959 students in 7 settlements. The project also had a strong communication and advertising campaign to reach the maximum number of people from the target group, as well as from the general public with 31 media publications and 377 Google AdWords campaigns and weekly posts on Facebook & Instagram. Two annual online surveys were conducted among the beneficiary''s audience - with 1800 and 1500 users.