Teen Peer Education update!

When I was in Bamako shortly after World AIDS day in December, our peer educator Socrates pulled me aside to talk about the Teen Peer Education program.

The program has been running for over a year now, with a total of 1,041 participating teens in 2015, and the majority of our participants are teen girls between 14 and 18 years old. Socrates pointed out that a large percentage of the population is living on the outskirts of the city where they don't easily access educational events or health services. His idea is to expand the program to these areas and start helping the teens run the sessions. 

The benefits of this plan is that, first of all, teens themselves would be stepping into leadership positions. Secondly, we would be increasing our impact 5-fold if we expanded to 4 new neighborhoods. In areas where teens have less access to information, they become more at-risk for sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancies.

We want to fully support Socrates' initiative to grow this program and put teens in leadership positions.

Please join us is promoting teen health and education in Bamako!