Kupang – The laughter of children and adolescents is crisp when enjoying a story told by a youth group from Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), in the afternoon of central Indonesia.
“In this way we embrace teenagers to understand their own bodies,” said Mariana Yunita Hendriyani Opat, Child Sexual Health Rights Educator, who is also the founder of the Southeast Youth Community.
Mariana or who is called Tata together with her colleagues founded the Tenggara Youth Community and started the Bacarita Kespro program, which was found with inter-village communities to provide education about sexual health for adolescents. It delivers education with innovative learning methods such as storytelling, educational games, and the use of teaching aids.
Bacarita Kespro comes from the word bacarita in Kupang Malay, which means ‘to tell stories’. The target of this program is adolescents who come from the poor, marginalized, socially excluded, and underserved groups.
“I found the fact that most of the 500 youth in NTT do not have access to sources of sexual education information and communities to talk about sexual education issues. This figure is in line with various other problems, such as cases of sexual harassment that still occur or extramarital pregnancy among NTT adolescents, “said the figure born in Kiupukan on July 3, 1992.
Seeing the large number of children expelled from school when facing cases of pregnancy outside of marriage, and the lack of parental understanding of the rights and needs of adolescents, Tata is moving its program to provide two-way communication, where the roles of parents and children are included.
Health Education The principal obstacle in this program is the wall of taboo in sexual education. Not everyone realizes the importance of early childhood sexual education. In fact, not all teenagers can do it to tell their closest circle of people such as family and siblings. And it is difficult to convince the community, including church circles, about sexual education.
“When I was in elementary school, I experienced similar violence, but it seemed normal. Until college, I felt I had to hurry to find a solution, with health education that made teenagers dare to tell their parents, and parents got the insight to explain, “said the figure of a woman who graduated from Nusa Cendana University.
One indicator of the success of the program is when parents open up to sexual education. Not only explain to their children but also to other parents. Tata feels they can be said to be successful if they discuss openly sexual education in the family environment.
In the most pragmatic context, the Southeast Youth Community also measures success by understanding teaching materials. For example, they made a quiz after delivering the material and if the understanding had changed, Tata said that could be an indicator of the program’s success.
, the Kespro Bacarita program has reached 2,000 teenagers from 43 communities in provinces throughout NTT. For each session, Tata and his Southeast Youth Community facilitators can invite 20 children to join the class in person and in the network.
During the pandemic, the program also broadcast learning materials for young children about gender violence and early childhood sex education through social media such as Facebook. The goal is to make content about sexual health understandable and easy for teenagers to think about.
They also open youth counseling if they face cases such as dating violence. In fact, they also help teenagers if the case continues, including to get legal assistance from institutions in the legal field such as LBH Apik.
This coverage includes Kota Kupang, Oesao Village in Kupang District, Neke Village in Timor Tengah Selatan District and Kera Island in East Sumba Regency with Kopernik. In addition, to expand access to sexual education education, they collaborated with the BKKBN, the AIDS Commission and Women for Indonesia.
This led him to be chosen as the recipient of the Spirit of Astra Terpadu for (SATU) Indonesia Awards 2020 in the health sector. As one of the judges, Prof. Nila Moeloek at the 11th SATU Indonesia Awards 2020 at the end of October gave an explanation regarding reproductive health as a fundamental thing.
“The appreciation for the SATU Indonesia Awards is a supporting material for our movement to continue to be able to embrace adolescents in reproductive health. Our hope is that we can embrace the disability community,” said Tata.
Tata’s spirit in educating children’s sexual health rights is in line with Astra’s aspirations to prosper with the nation.
Anang Fadhilah
