What do you do when there’s a bomb ticking in a university of 7,000 students? Of course you call in the experts to find the bomb to diffuse it. This is what the officials of the University of Bohol Family Care and Lying-in center did when they found out from a survey that a lot of young boholanos are engaged in sexually explosive behavior. They came out with SAFE, which stands for Students Action for Elimination of Reproductive Health Risks.

RISKS

While the timer is ticking, the 24-month old program would educate young people about the bomb, its traits and triggers, and ways on how to deactivate it.

The program is exceptional in the way that it employs what may be called undercover agents embedded among the population. It recruits and trains 30 students as advocates and 20 volunteer nursing students as peer counselors, woth only 10 adult partners. These agents seek to neutralize the bomb of ignorance with the power of knowledge—facts and figures about reproductive health and adolescent sexuality.

Using students to bring the information to fellow students is ingenious. Who better to carry the message that someone who talks their language, who dresses the same way they do, and who understands what they are going through? No age gaps to bridge. Of course, the adults are there to guide them and to give them access to actual medical services these young people may need.

Grace Granado, project manager and full- time project staff, says: “Members of our staff here at the (center) were young. At the start of the project, some of them were fresh graduates of nursing. Their physical appearance, along with the absence of age gap, helped.”

The university is an ideal proponent. In a give-and-take situation, the university’s College of Nursing and Midwifery and its departments of sociology, and guidance and counseling provided the warm bodies for the program’s advocates and peer counselors, while the center provided the facilities and actual hands-on training for the university’s students.

Granado says, “We did not have a hard time promoting [reproductive health] among the students. The sociology and guidance and counseling classes… provided us direct access to the students. The students were appreciative.”

But the program also captured the attention of students who were not in any way connected to health and medical services. “Even those who were not guidance and counseling majors seemed interested. It was even funny when some boys from engineering and criminology were a bit shy in asking questions on sex,” she adds.

There were formal lectures and open forums. But as part of their curriculum, students also get to visit the center, which have been transformed from a storeroom. Students were exposed to materials that include frequently asked questions about bodily changes that naturally go along with adolescence. That the executive director of the center is lawyer Nuevas Montes has its advantages. Granado says, “[Montes] is part owner of the university. And she’s our vice mayor. I think one of our biggest advantages was when we worked closely with the sociology, and guidance and counseling faculty.”

A lawyer and a politician, Montes was vice mayor and head of the city council, and vice president and member of the university’s faculty. She paved the way for access to faculty, local government officials, and other non-government organizations. “The key was that we were able to create enabling environment for reproductive health promotion,” Montes says.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

These advantages came in handy when the program became so successful among its target audience that it naturally became the object of criticisms. When the program expanded to include a radio show, that’s when it started getting a flak. The Catholic Church reacting to the open discussions on adolescent reproductive health, even issued a pastoral letter regarding the program. The center, which later became more as safe harbor, falsely earned the tag as an abortion clinic which promoted “illegal and immoral acts…badly influencing and exploiting the youth.”

Not everyone in the university was happy with the program. The university physician, an active member of the Family Life Apostolate, a conservative parish-based organization, opposed the program. She had insisted that Safe Harbor advocated abortion as well as a family planning method. “Of course, we clarified our side. We never advocated for abortion. We also did not perform abortions here…although there were female teenagers who were dealing with teenage pregnancy who approached us. What we offered was counseling,” explains Granado.

Expectedly, the controversy raged on. And program proponents were of two minds about it: to ignore it or to fight back. Montes admitted that even their fellow NGO workers were concerned with the hullabaloo; they were afraid the Anti-Safe Harbor sentiments expressed by the Catholic Church would affect their NGO’s too. And so, Safe Harbor issued a press statement clarifying their positions, specifically against abortion.

Montes also went further than that. She went to the stakeholders and other affected groups, such as the city council, the city health office, the mayor and other NGO’s, and directly communicated with them.

That Montes had a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward public perception might have also helped. As a protestant who won a prime political seat, she knew that the catholic block vote does not exist. She also sought comfort in the fact that the university is non-denominational. As everyone in the program hoped and expected, the controversy died a natural death, with Safe Harbor, exceeding its targets- and hopefully diffusing the bomb.

PUBLISHED BY RHEALTH, The magazine on reproductive health management, Volume 1 No.1, pages 30-32.