In the autumn of 2022, 28 community champions joined a 6-day training on knowledge and communication skills for reproductive health and antenatal care in Son La city Vietnam. This training is part of the larger project which aims to increase the utilization of health services and reduce child marriage, a form of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Community champions will be trained to raise awareness and spread key project messages in the community to improve knowledge about healthy sexual and reproductive health (SRH) practices and the negative impacts of early marriage and child-bearing. The training was attended by commune health staff and members of the local Women’s and Youth organizations.

During the first three days of the training session, participants learned about a range of SRH topics including gender, sex, gender equality, SGBV, pregnancy care including pre- and post-natal care, safe sex and consent, child marriage, and inbreeding. The last three days of the training focused on good communication skills and designing participatory education sessions. The participants worked in groups to develop a communication activity as practice for organizing education sessions of their own in the future.

Mrs. Quàng Thị Ún, a chairperson of the Women’s organization in Tông Cọ commune, shared this thought: “I found the training very useful for me. I learnt much about gender, safe sex, and participatory communication skills. Nowadays, in my commune, youth often have unsafe sex before marriage, they overuse emergency contraceptive pills, and don’t want to use condoms. I think that practice is not good. I really want to bring the knowledge, especially the participatory approaches we learnt from this training, to organize education activities for youth in my commune”. Similarly, Mr. Lu Van Lang, a staff from the Youth organization, also enjoyed the training very much. He said that he has participated in several trainings previously, but he was impressed with the way the trainers led the sessions, the activities were very interactive and friendly.

Read more about the project Improving reproductive health and preventing child marriage in Nepal and Vietnam.

Read more about the Training of teachers to improve adolescent reproductive health in Vietnam.