Teaching orphans about sex, relationships and health
 
Unfortunately, Ukraine has one of the largest populations of orphaned, partly due to the nuclear disaster Chernobyl (more information about Chernobyl, see Value Report Ukraine, Kiev). These children need special care and education when it comes to relationships, sex and health issues since they haven’t been able to experience this like children in normal families do.
 
 
 
As a social worker in the Kharkiv health department, Irina Mashtal spent a great deal of time talking about reproductive health issues with youngsters. But while working in a region with one of the largest populations of orphaned youth in Ukraine, Mashtal recognized that the specific needs of this group were unmet. Many children growing up in orphanages face challenges beyond the normal trials of entering adolescence, and Mashtal and her coworkers wanted to use their expertise as social workers to address the root of the difficulties orphans face.

When the Kharkiv Health Department decided to place special emphasis on providing comprehensive sex education for orphaned youth, Mashtal saw an opportunity for a new initiative. She and Olexander Polyansky founded Rainbow of Life, an NGO dedicated to ensuring that young people living in orphanages receive comprehensive and appropriate sexual health education. Working in teams at special summer camps for orphans, the organization conducted six workshops for more than 120 young people. The eight-hour sessions, with groups of varying ages, were interactive and made use of role playing, drawing, and games. The group discussed issues of love, friendship, health, communication, sexuality, contraception, pregnancy, HIV and AIDS. “Many young people living in orphanages have difficulties understanding decision making in relationships and family planning because they have very different concepts of what a family is," says Polyansky. Thus, the group added special emphasis in their curriculum on communication skills, building successful in relationships, and accomplishing goals.

As the group continued to work, they realized that they were only scraping the surface of the issue, since there are more than 6.000 young people living in orphanages in Kharkiv, which made it logistically impossible to reach them all. They realized that the best way to reach more young people would be to train teachers at orphanages to teach the sex- and relationship education themselves. Since May 2007, Rainbow of Life has conducted three three-day trainings and has worked with more than hundred teachers. Rainbow of Life now fundraises for support to realize its plans to delve more deeply into the methodology of teaching sex education to boys and the pedagogy of working with young people with mental illnesses.