Overview
The following newsletter published by The Shriver Centre, discusses The Mpilonhle Project’s aims to reduce teenage pregnancy and HIV/AIDS in rural South African schools near Mtubatuba. How using mobile health units, it provides health education, HIV testing, counseling, and computer training. The Newsletter also discusses how, Dr. Braden held listening sessions with local schools in 2006 to address teen health issues. Funded by PEPFAR and supported by the Angel Network and Africa Outreach Project, the initiative targets 13 schools in the Umkhanyakude District.
Article
The Mpilonhle Project1 (meaning “a good life”) seeks to reduce the dramatic rates of teenage pregnancy and HIV-AIDS among the 9,800 South African teens attending 12 rural secondary schools near the town of Mtubatuba in the Umkhanyakude District through a strategic high school curriculum that includes education in healthy lifestyles, and provides HIV testing and counseling, health assessments, and computer training. The project uses three mobile health units that rotate among four secondary schools each and are staffed by dedicated Mpilonhle nurses, health educators, counselors, and computer technicians.
In September 2008, Dr. Braden conducted “listening sessions” with school administrators, teachers, and students and learned that teen pregnancy is considered to be the most pressing health issue other than the spread of HIV; 17-20% of adolescent girls are pregnant or already have 1-3 children of their own. These shocking statistics led Dr. Braden to begin developing a program to address the sexual and reproductive health of women in South Africa, the aim of which is to prevent health and emotional problems and support the parenting practices of youths who become pregnant during their school years. The program would expand the present health curriculum to include more information on teenage pregnancy, its associated mental health issues, and what parenting involves. It would include developing a tiered infrastructure of 72 local volunteer resource teachers and more than 35 peer youth counselors in the schools, supported by Mpilonhle’s six nurse practitioners and three social workers. These teachers and youth counselors would be trained to identify students at risk for or struggling with problems related to pregnancy and parenting, and offer them support and interventions on an ongoing basis. The volunteers maintain cell phone contact with the Mpilonhle team for emergencies when the team is offsite.
Dr. Braden has approached a private foundation to fund the project and hopes to begin work on it within the year.
“My project will support the health of pregnant girls and reduce the fear, confusion, and mythology surrounding them,” Braden elaborated. “Anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of these high school students are orphans. They are extremely poor, and either raise themselves, care for their siblings, or live with other family members, due to the effect of AIDS on sick or dead parents and elders. While schools must abide by an official policy of inclusion for all children, there is no system in place to assist with or ensure the policy’s implementation. Therefore, considerable stigmatization exists of pregnant girls (and other youths with health, emotional or physical disabilities) in school. We expect our outcomes to demonstrate attitudinal changes among administrators, teachers and students, and empower these young women to guard themselves against unprotected sex, gender violence, and other commonly accepted high-risk situations.”
1 The Mpilonhle project is funded through the former Bush Administration’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program with start-up funding from the Angel Network founded by Oprah Winfrey and the Africa Outreach Project established by Oscar-winning actress and South African native Charlize Theron in partnership with the Entertainment Industry Foundation.
