Guidance on violence prevention and trainings on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention in Ukraine

In August-December, 2019 in Ukraine within the UNESCO regional programme on education specialists capacity development for healthy living, HIV prevention among students and violence prevention in educational institutions UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) in collaboration with the Charity Fund “Woman Health and Family Planning” published an earlier developed Guidance for educators on violence prevention in educational institutes, organized a national presentation of the Guidance, and held teaching seminars on sexual and reproductive health, HIV, discrimination, and violence prevention among students, living with HIV, in educational institutions.

In the published Guidance “Violence prevention in educational institutions” («Попередження насильства в закладах освіти») internationally recognized approaches to violence and bullying prevention in educational institutions, recommendations for introduction of management and awareness-raising actions were presented to create safe and free of violence educational space. Through presented recommendations, educational institutions will be able to develop their own strategy of violence prevention and countering, react to cases of violence and help those, who faced, participated in or witnessed violence. The foundation of the Guidance is based on the materials, provided by UNESCO IITE and adapted to context of the Ukrainian educational system.

In September-October, 2019 three seminars were organized and held on sexual and reproductive health, in particular, for educators in Ivano-Frankivsk, Sumy and Kherson Oblasts. The seminars were hosted by regional advanced pedagogical training institutes / continuous education academies. Participants included teachers of basics of health, biology, practicing (school) psychologists, social workers, “basics of health” methodologists (district, region, city), educators, school principles.

On November 5, 2019, hosted by Ivano-Frankivsk post-graduate teacher training institute, and on November 8-9, 2019, hosted by Sumy regional post-graduate teacher training institute, seminars on sexual and reproductive health were held. During the training educators and regional general secondary education administration specialists worked on the management system of Guidance “Reproductive health and responsible behavior of adolescent students”, intended to help trainers in educational process with high school students, and interactive exercise implementation methodology, described in the Guidance. Overall, 94 specialists participated in the trainings.

UNESCO IITE and Charity Fund “Woman Health and Family Planning” work in close collaboration with The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, regional education departments and regional advanced pedagogical training institutes / continuous education academies.