Volunteer Opportunities with MAWA

Nyango Melissa Nambangi is the Founder and Executive Director of the Minnesota African Women Association (MAWA)

August 9, 2014

Letter to African parents in Minnesota – Backgrounder for MAWA’s BART program

Dear African parent/guardian:
We want to tell you what some issues are for African teens in Minnesota – we have been working with them since 2004 so we do know something about this. You may think “not MY teens” but just read through this. You all know how hard you work and how you are hardly home after school hours because you are struggling to earn more for your family’s upkeep. In that after-school time, if there are no responsible adults watching them, a lot can go wrong with African teens. This is why MAWA, the Minnesota African Women’s Association, had to start offering the Becoming A Responsible Teenager, BART, curriculum to African youth across the Twin Cities, thanks to a grant from the Office of Minority Health’s Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative. This is our third year of providing this educational workshop for African youth and it is based on serious realities that face our African community in Minnesota.

For over ten years, the North-West Hennepin County community service providers – schools, social services and others, tried to get the African community organizations to take the lead on providing reproductive health education because African girls made the highest number of pregnant teenagers in the region, but did not succeed. We held interminable discussions and meetings with many African organizations but nobody took a step forward while some of us figured the African community most affected should take the lead. There was a high drop-out rate from high schools and girls not proceeding to college because of pregnancy. Almost all of these pregnant teens were and are still thrown out of their homes by their parents and the father of the unborn child immediately refuses any responsibility and does absolutely nothing to help the teen and the baby when it is born.

Then a couple of years ago, MAWA learned that some 24 teens returned pregnant to one specific high school in September that year. But the horrifying part of the statistic was that of these 24 pregnant girls, 18 were of one West African nationality. This was just in one of the schools; we have no idea how bad it is or was in the other schools with a high population of African girls. 75%! That is too high and MAWA resolved to start providing teen pregnancy prevention education with parental consent. This meant educating the parents as well so they could overcome their fears that providing teen pregnancy prevention education to girls is “permitting them to become sexually active”.

Adding to the urgency was the fact that the annual report of new HIV/AIDS cases reported by the MN Department of Health recently showed that six African countries still topped the list but more horrifying was that the majority of cases were now youth between the ages of 18 and 24.

MAWA then researched various teen pregnancy prevention curricula and found the most culturally appropriate one for African teens, BART.
BART stands for Becoming a Responsible Teen: An HIV Risk Reduction Program for Adolescents. It is an HIV prevention curriculum designed primarily for African-American adolescents, ages 14-18, in non-school, community-based settings. It consists of eight sessions, 1.5 to 2 hours each, and includes interactive group discussions and role plays that have been created by teens. Teens learn to “spread the word” to their friends about HIV risks. They are encouraged to practice skills outside the group and share the results. The group provides creative solutions to reported problems.
Although the focus of BART is HIV/AIDS prevention, the curriculum includes topics and activities relevant to teen pregnancy prevention. Teens learn to clarify their own values about sexual decisions and pressures as well as practice skills to reduce sexual risk-taking. These include assertive communication, refusal techniques, self-management, and problem solving. Also, abstinence is woven throughout the curriculum and is discussed as the best way to prevent HIV infection and pregnancy.
So far, over 350 African youth have taken advantage of our program since 2012. Kudos to the Sudanese, Kenyan, Liberian and Cameroonian organizations that have worked with us and brought their youth to MAWA for this 20 hour curriculum. Some of the youth have spoken passionately in these sessions, educating others about the dangers of reckless behavior and some have become peer educators even going as far as educating their parents about what they have learned. One of our girls got an award in her school because she took on the cause of educating her peers on the dangers of HIV/AIDS a step further. We teach them as much as we possibly can, staying as culturally appropriate as possible. We teach them about abstinence too and during the Completion of Program Certificate Award Ceremony, several of them speak up on the impact of the program on their lives. My favorite remark, expressed variously by different girls through the years is this one: “After all I have learned about STDs and HIV?AIDS, I’ve decided abstinence till marriage is the only option for me.”
Some parents have also asked MAWA to provide an adult version of this program for them because, to quote one woman, “we don’t know anything about it”. We are working on that.

Parents, we have taken these kids away from our African system of education where most of us had subjects related to Reproductive Health, where girls going through rites-of-passage ceremonies got to learn about reproductive health from older women. We, as African parents still find it a taboo to hold such discussions with our kids so we leave them to fall prey to myths and deliberate false information out there. It will surprise you some of the things they are doing to avoid getting pregnant. Many still tell us, “You can’t get pregnant the first time”. We need to take care of our daughters and sons as well. We do this by educating them. Even if you are the kind of parent that can discuss everything with your child, some things he or she believes only come out when she is with her peers and feels free and uninhibited by a parent’s presence. So, send your child to MAWA where our trained BART educators will educate them for you and have them on the same page as their American peers who have a better knowledge and understanding of reproductive health.

We have two more sessions scheduled for August before they return to school Contact us if you have a daughter or son you would like to attend.
Email us at mawaagile@yahoo.com.