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Lecturers from thirteen colleges of Education across the country have completed a two-week Master Trainers course on the National Family Life and HIV Education (FLHE) curriculum organized by the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) in collaboration with Action Health Incorporated (AHI) a youth health and development non-governmental organization from the 14th – 24th Mach 2011. The intensive training program was conducted as part of efforts to scale up nationwide implementation of the FLHE curriculum which is Nigeria’s major education sector response designed to halt the increasing HIV epidemic among in-school youths. The training focused on increasing the lecturers’ knowledge and comfort in discussing sexuality-related concepts, as well as their skills in the appropriate methodologies required to teach FLHE to their undergraduate teachers - in-training.
Although government stakeholders, donors and non-governmental organizations have been working to ensure successful integration of the FLHE into the school curriculum at all levels of education, there is still a significant paucity in the number of trained teachers needed for its effective implementation. For instance, of all the ninety-four colleges of education across the country, only twenty-two colleges have lecturers trained for the integration of this course into their teacher-training programmes. Therefore, this recently concluded master trainers workshop is an important contribution to increasing the pool of lecturers equipped to ensure the curriculum’s implementation in more teacher-training institutions in the country. To address this shortage of FLHE teachers, AHI has been working with NCCE and FME to operationalise the recommendation of the “National Education Sector HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan” which called for the training of teachers in Nigeria to include Family Life and HIV/AIDS Education programmes. Under this initiative, AHI with funding received from the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation is helping to catalyze the development of a national base of lecturers with the competence to prepare undergraduate teachers for FLHE implementation, as part of their minimum general requirements for graduation with goal of ensuring a consistent supply of FLHE teachers for the education sector.The forty lecturers who participated in this Master Trainer’s course were drawn from the Colleges of Education Oyo, Enugu, Azare, Sokoto, Ekiadolor, Waka Biu, Arochukwu, Ankpa, Katsina-Ala, Warri, Ila Orangun, Kano and Maiduguri. On return to their various institutions, they will be responsible for conducting step-down trainings for additional lecturers to ensure wider and effective implementation of the programme.
