ICT-enhanced HIV and health education
UNESCO IITE supports education sector and civil society to develop, implement and scale up good quality HIV and health education programmes and use ICT-enhanced approaches to empower young people with the knowledge, skills and values they need to maintain good health throughout their lives.
Such health education programmes and awareness raising tools are rights-based, scientifically accurate and grounded in evidence, culturally appropriate, gender responsive and age-specific. They provide adolescents and young people with information about different aspects of sexuality, general and reproductive health and help them develop important personal and social skills that are necessary for safe and enjoyable interpersonal relations and protection from HIV, sexually transmitted infections, early and unintended pregnancy, substance use and other risks for health and well-being.
This work is guided by UNESCO’s Global Strategy on Education for Health and Well-Being, IITE’s Mid-Term Strategy and contributes to the achievement of targets of UNAIDS Strategy 2016-2021: ZERO new HIV infections, ZERO discrimination and ZERO AIDS-related deaths. As a UNAIDS cosponsor, UNESCO supports national education sector responses to end AIDS.
Technical assistance provided by UNESCO IITE helps to mainstream HIV and health education into the curriculum and learning materials, train educators, service providers, youth workers, sensitize parents and other stakeholders, develop ICT-enabled tools and approaches for training and awareness raising of adolescents and young people.
Research and technical guidance
UNESCO supports research to improve understanding of the situation related to HIV and health education in Member States and how ICT-based tools are used to increase the effectiveness of such education.
Policy and practice reviews Prevention Education in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Substance use prevention in educational settings in Eastern Europe and Central Asia inform decision makers, facilitate policy advocacy and good practice dissemination.
Policy dialogue, experience sharing and networking
To facilitate policy dialogue, experience sharing and networking, UNESCO organizes and participates in different national, regional and global conferences, workshops and technical consultations that promote decisions and actions to improve the quality and expand the scale of HIV and health education programmes.
Teacher and service provider capacity building
UNESCO supports capacity building for teachers and youth workers to improve their knowledge and skills in HIV and health education through face-to-face training and increasingly through:
- Internet-based distant learning;
- e-courses such as Adolescent Health in the Life Cycle and Improving the Knowledge of HIV;
- and knowledge hubs such as ADOLESMED.
These resources are managed by UNESCO partners All-Ukrainian Association of Teachers and Trainers, Belarus Association of UNESCO Clubs, and others.
ICT-enabled health education and awareness raising
UNESCO develops training programmes, publications and supports online talk shows with experts and celebrities to sensitize parents about the goals, content and approaches of school-based HIV prevention and health education. About 2 million people in EECA have benefited from these initiatives including Mama Mia! Being a Parent of an Adolescent project so far.
UNESCO supports the production of multimedia resources (video tutorials, documentaries, edutainment cartoons) to make school-based and non-formal HIV education and awareness raising more interactive and impactful.
- In Russia, the Ministry of Education and Science has recommended to use the UNESCO-UNAIDS supported video lesson on HIV in all schools.
- Thanks to the partnership with Nauchpok Youtube channel, a series of 10 edutainment videos about HIV, sexual and reproductive health, gender, violence, relationships and other issues have scored over 8 million views in EECA countries during 2017 alone, adapted and translated into Armenian and Kyrgyz languages.
- Multilingual Internet and social media resources teensLIVE.info, teensLIVE.am and TEENS.KG provide young people with accurate information about relationships and health across EECA. They serve as interactive open learning spaces and reference points for adolescents seeking information, on-line counselling and youth-friendly services.
- In 2015, UNAIDS, UNESCO IITE and OK.RU launched a campaign Concerns even those, who are not concerned to promote HIV testing in EECA. The campaign’s digital platform ok.ru/test is used to life stream talk shows with celebrities, experts and people living with HIV to raise public awareness about HIV prevention, importance of early testing and treatment and non-discrimination of people living with HIV. Over 3,5 million people benefited from this initiative.