When I hear about sex-education, the first thing that comes to my mind is a boring teacher, who is at least from two generations before mine, teaching me about sex and how it goes in the most awkward way.
During Primary, a teacher would come once in a year and talk about sexual education. Most of us did not know what to do with the information or even what to ask because we did not have a clue about what was going on.
The only thing we were thinking of at that time was lunch breaks and playground mess. Sex education was not in our minds. Basically, the preacher was preaching to the wrong audience at the wrong time.
Eventually, we all grew up despising sex-ed talks. Most of us thought they were the most boring things ever. That is why many young people now have little to no information on the whole spectrum of sexual reproductive health or sex-ed.
That is a problem that Christelle Giraneza and her three other friends, Mick Ndayishimiye, Honore Niyibizi, Frederick Ntabana thought of solving when they came up with the Urukundo life skill board game initiative.
Giraneza is a young passionate and driven young woman. She is a fresh medicine graduate in general medicine and surgery. Giraneza is a driven sexual and reproductive health activist and advocate soon going to Rwamagana to start her medical internship in Rwamagana District.
She told me of the initiative and how much it is impacting and filling some of the gaps that are happening in our society now and I thought it is a story to tell.
“We started the initiative as four medical students who were being involved in community outreach,” Giraneza said.
“There was this time in 2018 where we were doing research with students from Jefferson university. It is a university from the US. The research was on teenage pregnancy and the effects of teenage pregnancy,” she added.
While carrying out the research Giraneza and her fellow colleagues saw that there is a gap in information on sexual and reproductive health. That’s when they decided as students to support the community.
“We followed the UNFPA recommendations that comprehensive sexuality education should be delivered through game plays and role plays.”
It is then that they decided to make the urukundo life skill board game. The aim of the game was to “cover the gap which was in the community, the lack of evidence based information delivered in a youth friendly and interactive way.”
The game that they came up with is made of question cards and answer cards and other game accessories.
According to this young achiever, the game ‘helps young people learn about sexual reproductive health and rights and also mental health but in a more fun interactive but yet with an evidence based approach’.
Giraneza and her co-founders revolutionized sexual education and sexual health and rights and mental health into games and made an impact to young people in different communities.
“[Young people] do interact with our game and we are launching the mobile application soon. We believe we shall have a huge number of audience as we want to cross borders and go to other countries in Africa,” she stated.
“We have received a positive feedback from the youth that the game has made a difference in their lives because they can get information in a easier way,” added Giraneza.
She stated that it is important to educate the youth on matters such as this one especially during this time of digital revolution.
“We [Urukundo enterprise] believe that young people should get educated about sexual reproductive health because in they are extremely exposed to the mainstream media and social media. This can expose them to risky sexual behavior,” Giraneza revealed.
They believe that these are sensitive times for young people to get the right information from the right sources. “If they don’t, they will get the wrong information from another place.”
They started the Urukundo initiative as young people. They are intern doctors but they did support the community like they had wished when they started.
“We have seen an impact among young people. We were able to create jobs and create a platform to provide evidence based information to so many people in the country,” Giraneza said.
