One group of consultants shares their experiences in a skit.
In my last post I wrote about an organization in northern Nicaragua, CESESMA, that uses a framework of human rights to address the needs of children and adolescents. I described their use of consultorias, or investigative consultancies, to empower young people to address problems in their communities.
So, what does it look like when kids and young people are empowered to investigate problems in their communities? How do they talk about critical issues like sex and sexuality?
I traveled to a rural community in northern Nicaragua to observe a consultoria in action. CESESMA’s most recent consultancy is about sex education, a delicate topic in Nicaragua, a majority-Catholic country.
I took a bus to the rural community of La Grecia, up winding dirt roads into coffee country. A dozen consultants gathered after school for the last day of interviews. Ranging in age from 11 to 14, the boys and girls chatted quietly as the facilitator handed out the questionnaires.
Earlier in the process the facilitators trained the young people in consultancy, giving them background on the theme of sex and sexuality. Then the consultants designed the survey for their peers, including questions about their understanding of sexuality and their sexual and reproductive rights.
While CESESMA usually asks young people to frame their own investigations, in this case they proposed the critical issue of sexuality. Nicaragua has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Latin America and a staggeringly high rate of sexual violence against girls—two-thirds of reported rapes are committed against girls under 17 years old.
Harry Shier of CESESMA emphasizes, “In Nicaragua, sexual abuse and sexual violence against children is widespread, some say endemic, so children need to be able to protect themselves from these risks.”
Yet despite statistics that show sexual activity beginning at increasingly younger ages, there is little consensus about how to address sexuality with children.
Thus CESESMA’s goal was to find out what children and pre-adolescents know and want to know about sex and sexuality in order to develop an effective curriculum for sex education for kids.
That’s why they chose consultants between the ages of 11 and 15, and their interview subjects were kids as young as eight.
I tagged along with three girls, Josselin, Letys, and Paula, as they interviewed. I followed Letys to the doorway of a small adobe house. Fourteen year-old Maria came to the door, and smilingly agreed to be surveyed.
First Letys asked, “What do you know about sexuality?” and Maria responded, “It’s something between two people.”
There were long pauses between Letys’ questions and Maria’s soft answers.
Next Letys asked, “Do you know what your sexual rights are?” Maria responded, “I don’t know.” Similarly, she said she didn’t know her reproductive rights.
Yet when Letys asked what she would like to know about sexual and reproductive rights, Maria did have an answer: “their importance, methods.”
The lack of detail in Maria’s short responses is typical for children and adolescents in Nicaragua. While the national curriculum officially includes sexual education starting in primary school, in practice it is not consistently taught.
Consultants from La Grecia study their results.
And critics say what is taught focuses on sexual biology and doesn’t address the most important needs of kids and teens, like how to prevent pregnancy or sexually-transmitted infections (STIs).
A recent study of 2,800 adolescents in the capital, Managua, found that 28% were sexually active, including 6% of youth between 13 and 15 years old. The same study revealed a critical lack of care for their health: 75% of the sexually active teenagers used no protection when they had sex. And less than half of those who did use protection used condoms.
Yet Maria’s replies show young Nicaraguans’ desire to know more about sex and sexuality, though they may lack the vocabulary to even ask questions.
See my next post on Monday, to read the final chapter on the project.
