‘Teach us reproductive health education’
Over 90% of students say it’s needed to protect teens
If you think Malaysian teenagers aren’t ready for reproductive health education, think again – over 90% of students said it is needed to protect teens from sexual abuse.
That’s just one of several interesting statistics gathered during the #SayaSayangSaya town hall meetings, organised in eight cities across the country and attended by over 1,500 students and teachers from 316 schools.
The town hall meetings were co-organised by Unicef Malaysia, Digi, WOMEN:Girls and The Star’s R.AGE team as a follow-up to R.AGE’s Predator In My Phone campaign against child sexual crimes.
Participants were given the chance to openly discuss reproductive health issues, child sexual abuse and cyber safety with experts from the police’s Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Unit (D11), the Federation of Reproductive Health Associations Malaysia, R.AGE and Digi.
“Children and youths at the town halls shared with us that many of their friends are being pressured to engage in sexual activity – both online and offline including at home – and they are looking for guidance on how to better protect themselves,” said Unicef Representative to Malaysia Marianne ClarkHattingh.
“The students’ message has been consistent across all the town halls. Our next step is to turn this message into a sustainable programme and work with the government to implement it at an educational level,” Unicef Malaysia communication specialist Indra Kumari Nadchatram said.
“These campaigns were just a start. The hard work begins now in order to give the children what they want.”
Polls were conducted at all the town halls, and the results showed that 65% of the girls present were being pressured to engage in sexual activity, compared to 30% of the boys.
The eighth and final town hall was held yesterday in Penang, where another 350 students from 46 schools repeated the same call for better education on reproductive health.
Digi sustainability programme manager Philip Ling was optimistic that the town halls have generated enough data to effect a change in the current education syllabus.
“We have been working with the Education Ministry and this campaign gives us a lot of data to present to the ministry and discuss the next course of action,” he said.