The Sunday Mail
Bridge Reporter —
SportAIDS Project partnered Harare Girls High School during the weeklong Schools Arts, Science and Sports Festival which ended on a high last Friday. Last week all government schools held their SASSAF at their various schools throughout the country and SportAIDS worked with Girls High in Harare.
The weeklong Schools Annual Science Sports and Arts Festival (SASSAF) was a resounding success with nearly all the 700 students participating in a variety of activities ranging from sports (ball games), dance, public speaking, art and drama to name but a few.
The festival is part of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s new curriculum which seeks to make a complete person out of all students through encouraging them to harness non academic skills.
Once the SASSAF are done they then move to Cluster Annual Science Sports and Arts Festival (CASSAF), then District becoming DASSAF, the Provincial becoming PASSAF then National becoming NASSAF.
SASSAF is part of the Life-skills Orientation Curriculum – an out-of-school programme also covering the Junior School (Grade 7), Secondary School education.
The syllabus covers activities that enhance life-skills and has thematic links to other learning areas across the curriculum. The skills include: relating, caring, giving, thinking, working, managing.
It was thus fitting that SportAIDS Project, which uses sport, arts and culture to disseminate basic information on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) and HIV and AIDS as well as Life Skills and Child protection and participation, was on hand to pass on its technical skills to the 700 students throughout the week.
SportAIDS Project worked in liaison with the Girls High School’s Youth Against AIDS (YAA) Club. The YAA members were given basic information on HIV and AIDS, Life Skills for them to share with their peers.
SportAIDS Project together with YAA members established a facilitation stand where students were invited to come and receive key information on their wellbeing such as the nine (9) core life skills which are: assertiveness, effective communication, interpersonal relationship, self-esteem, problem solving, peer resistance, critical thinking, decision making and self-awareness.
The students also learnt about the importance of knowing their HIV and AIDS status as well as issues surrounding stigma and discrimination.
One of the major highlights of the Festival was the performance by YAA members of a drama which educated the students on the dangers of teen pregnancies as informed by SportAIDS Project.
With SportAIDS Project having been part of the stakeholders who launched the National Adolescent and Youth Sexual Reproductive Health (ARH) Strategy 2 a week before, it was appropriate that a drama highlighting the plight of young girls be performed to the adolescent girls.
The drama was informed by statistics from the National Adolescent Fertility Study which shows that adolescent pregnancy remains a major challenge and is a contributor to maternal and child mortality.
The study showed that factors contributing to adolescent pregnancies include age, age at first sex, educational attainment, marriage, poverty, lack of information on Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) issues, living arrangements, sexual abuse.
The students got to be informed, through the drama, that consequences of adolescent pregnancy include effects on the girls’ health, education and income generating potential
Adolescent pregnancy is associated with higher morbidity and mortality for both the mother and child while health risk for the mother are from pregnancy to child birth.
The fully-packed Girls High auditorium got to appreciate that teenage mothers are more likely to have negative pregnancy outcomes – ‘ these include maternal death, illness and disability complications of unsafe abortion, STIs, HIV as well as higher morbidity and mortality levels experienced by the children of adolescent mothers.
SASSF proved the most ideal platform for SportAIDS Project to execute its mandate of contributing to national strategies such as ASRH Strategy 2 which aims to “Step up for good Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes for Adolescents and Youth in Zimbabwe.
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