Young ‘peer champions’ take sexual health lessons from school to school in Bor.
By John Gut
Student volunteers are teaching their peers how to prevent HIV, early pregnancy and gender-based violence, saying many young people still lack accurate information.
In schools across Bor, Jonglei State, a group of young volunteers known as peer champions on sexual and reproductive health and rights is teaching fellow students how to protect themselves from HIV, sexually transmitted infections, early pregnancy and gender-based violence.
The effort responds to a worrying trend. According to a 2023 annual report by UNFPA and UNICEF, cases of early unintended pregnancy among young girls, forced marriage, gender-based violence, HIV and AIDS, and drug abuse rose by 30 per cent in Bor Municipality. The rise has been attributed to a lack of accurate information on how to prevent these problems, which push young people out of school and feed a cycle of poverty.
The pressures are national, UNICEF has said that 52 per cent of girls in South Sudan are married before the age of 18. HIV data are patchy: in December 2024, VOA reported rising HIV cases across South Sudan’s states, with health authorities seeing HIV-positive pregnant women in Bor, while Jonglei’s state health ministry said the same month that infections had declined, crediting awareness campaigns.
Lessons in the classroom
The peer champions volunteer their time, working from school to school and targeting their peers with information about safer practices.
In one classroom session, a peer champion explained how HIV is transmitted; through blood, vaginal fluids, semen and breast milk and showed students the protection available, including condoms for women and for men. “At the end of the day, that is exactly how HIV is spread in society,” the peer champion told the class.
A Primary 8 pupil said one lesson students had taken away was not to share razor blades with an infected person. Similar sessions are also held at public gatherings.
“Many of our peers lack accurate information”
One of the peer champions said the team had reached “very many schools” and had met many challenges along the way, while learning how to overcome them.
“One of the challenges that we face is that many of our peers today lack accurate information about how to prevent themselves from acquiring STDs or STIs, and this is what we actually want to do,” the peer champion said. “For this, we have made sure as a team to try to at least reach out and talk to them. We give them the right information.”
The aim, the peer champion said, is for young people to know how to protect themselves from infection and from early pregnancy. For the volunteers, that information is what keeps their peers in school and out of the cycle of poverty that early pregnancy and disease can bring.
This story was produced by John Gut for the Digitalise Youth Mobile Journalism Fellowship.
Watch the full video here https://youtu.be/u-GLEo1jE6w
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