This programme is based on the notion that sex education involves much more than learning about sexual intercourse. That is, the curriculum development process focussed on encouraging youth to learn about sexuality in its broader aspects, rather than just bodily functions, hygiene, and sexual acts. Examples of topics covered were: nature, safety, culture, emotional engagement, problematic consequences, readiness of both people, and desire.

Similarly, this curriculum's HIV/AIDS prevention strategy was designed to enable young people to assess their own risk of contracting HIV and to explore appropriate risk reduction alternatives without restricting themselves to condom use only. The idea here was to go beyond HIV/AIDS by enabling youth to gain information about sexuality; explore attitudes and values related to growing up, gender roles, risk taking, and sexual expression and friendship; and to practice skills such as critical thinking, communication, and decision making.

Exploration of such topics required that the teacher promote continuing learning experiences by acting as a facilitator who has a trusting, open relationship with his or her students. A key strategy, then, was to help teachers become effective sex educators in the sense that they were non-judgmental and built trust among their students. To foster this kind of interaction, PATH conducted a 3-day training session for teachers called "Facilitating Sexuality and HIV Education for Youth". This session focussed on 1) understanding the nature of youth and their environments, 2) understanding lifestyles that may lead to sex or to the spread of HIV, 3) understanding the goals and content of sexuality education, 4) exploring attitudes toward sex and HIV/AIDS, 5) participatory learning approaches, student-centred teaching, and the process of behaviour change, and 6) facilitation skills including listening, questioning, and summarising skills.

Specifically, the training sessions sought to show the links between sex-related problems such as HIV infection among young people and the goals of sexuality education in order to help teachers realise the needs for, and their specific roles in providing, sex education. Information given to teachers emphasised how to integrate sex education into principal course content (for example, teachers were showed how information on bodily functions could be interwoven with information on modes of HIV transmission for men and women). Role playing exercises were used to enable teachers to recognise how their own attitudes could influence the tone and message of the education they provided (and, by extension, the degree to which students would feel comfortable opening up to them). Trainers worked to make teachers aware that providing information alone is not sufficient to bring about behaviour change and that motivation for changing behaviour varies from person to person. The teachers were helped to see their responsibility to organise sex education in many formats such as providing thorough knowledge, familiarising (discussing sex), practising skills (communication), and providing service (counselling) or equipment (contraceptives, condoms).

Youth, Sexuality, Sex Education, Family Planning, HIV/AIDS.

Organisers point out that sexuality and decision-making about sex is determined by many deep-seated values. For example, gendered values that can lead to unsafe sex include the idea that males are expected to express themselves sexually and given every opportunity to do so. Virginity is valued in women; many women lack the power to express their own sexual desires, or even to protect themselves from harm.