Learning about Living

Learning About Living

Learning about Living is a two-year project to help inform and engage young people in Nigeria on issues around sexual health, HIV and AIDS, maternal morbidity and gender violence.

Learning about Living comprises an e-learning tool that forms part of the Nigerian Family Life and HIV/AIDS Education (FLHE) school curriculum. The project was born in February 2007 as a collaboration between OneWorld UK, key Nigerian health NGOs and Butterfly Works in the Netherlands.

Learning about Living is being piloted in three locations across Nigeria: Lagos, Cross Rivers State and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, and includes two information and advice services. These have been designed in such a way that even the shyest of teenagers can pose questions and receive answers, as they do not even have to say the question out loud.

Through MyQuestion, adolescents submit their questions by text messages, online or through a telephone hotline. The questions are then answered by trained counsellors from the Nigerian NGO Education as a Vaccine Against AIDS (EVA). Such is the need for this kind of service that more than 2,500 questions were received within the first five days.

The second service, MyAnswer, gives young people the chance to win prizes by correctly answering a monthly question. Young people enter the competitions by texting their answer or going online and ten winners are picked and given airtime. The competition opened on December 1, 2007 – World Aids Day - with the question “What is the difference between HIV and AIDS?”

Learning about Living has three goals: to use ICT to educate young people on issues around adolescent reproductive health so that they can make informed decisions; to improve the information available on sex education and encourage debate; and to help to increase and improve gender equality in a country where male superiority is regarded as the norm.

The highly interactive e-learning tool is used in and out of schools and will be available on school laptops from One Laptop Per Child and Intel’s Classmate PC project. It was developed by Butterfly Works from the Netherlands in collaboration with Action Health Incorporated with support from the Nigeria Education and Research Development Council (NERDC).

Learning about Living is a multi-stakeholder project involving Nigerian and international partners, including: ActionAid International Nigeria; Action Health Incorporated; Girls’ Power Initiative, Education as a Vaccine Against AIDS (EVA); Butterfly Works Netherlands; and MTN Foundation through the MTN School Connect programme implemented by SchoolNet Nigeria; Federal Ministry of Education and Federal Ministry of Health.

Funding for the Learning about Living pilot comes from Oxfam Novib, Netherlands, MacArthur Foundation USA, Butterfly Works and Finalist IT Group, Netherlands.

For details, contact project manager Uju Ofomata at: uju.ofomata (at) oneworld.net or visit the website www.learningaboutliving.com

Learning about Living team

Uju, Britt, Gopal, Ken and Peter


Back to About OneWorld UK