The presence of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in the Catholic Community...

Graciana Jala takes bold step that opens doors for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in the small Catholic community of Njimafor – Bamenda in the Northwest Region of Cameroon.

By Fombong Comfort

WACameroon

 Introduction

It is generally understood that the Roman Catholic Church has ever remained much closed when it comes to the issue of sexuality education and birth control. The Church is intransigent about the use of any form of contraception, be it for birth control or disease prevention. This firm stand has often been a big challenge to penetrating Catholic circles with useful sexuality education especially targeting young people despite available evidence that this could lead to drop in rates of unwanted pregnancies and STIs.

The small Catholic community of Njimafor in Bamenda – Capital of the North West region is a good case in point. Whereas, young Catholic faithful continue to seek information on the topic from, often doubtful sources such as Television, Peers, Social Media or Sexual Orientation Websites such as Pornographic sites.

WACameroon Intervention Strategies

Women in Action against Gender Based Violence (WACameroon), is a women-led Community Based Organization (CBO) that addresses women and girls’ needs through capacity building, awareness raising on Health, Gender, Good Governance and Policy.

With financial support from UK based ViiV Healthcare/Positive Action For Children Fund (ViiV/PACF) that began in 2018, WACameroon intensified Comprehensive Sexuality Education for adolescents and young people in schools and community settings as a means to reduce unwanted pregnancies, STIs including HIV and AIDS.

Within the framework of its activities, WACameroon developed a Church based strategy to reach the lots of adolescents and young people through religious groups. It extended an invitation in 2019 to the Catholic Women Association (CWA) of Njimafor – a community in the outskirts of Bamenda for some of its members to take part in a community leaders’ training on Comprehensive Sexuality Education for adolescents. Although the association never delegated a representative, Graciana Jala – a member of the association attended the training after she stumbled on the invitation.

She testifies that:

“During the workshop, my fears were lessened when I saw other Catholic faithful. I was totally transformed by the lessons!”

“Transformed” Graciana takes up the challenge to reach out to adolescents

Graciana, a 50 year old single mother with three daughters after participating in the training confirmed that she was completely transformed in the end:

“by the time the workshop was half gone, I felt as if scales had fallen off my eyes”.

She realized that those issues treated and considered by the church as taboos were indeed essential information for children to help reduce teenage pregnancies, STIs and other social ills.

Graciana later shared her experience of the WACameroon training to her group and the group then invited WACameroon for a sensitization during a divisional meeting attended by about 358 women. Graciana also began sensitizing adolescents in her neighborhood through phone calls, village meetings and in taxis and buses.

Another critical move Graciana made was to contact the Youth Chaplain (Priest) of her Church to look for ways to have this lesson presented in Church youth groups. At the first contact, the Priest received the WACameroon manual for a review. The positive response came from the Priest two weeks later- Graciana was asked to mobilize the youths for an educative talk on Sexuality Education. The Priest who also participated in the educative talk, later appealed for WACameroon to plan more of such educative moments for the youths of the Church. This was a ground breaking move opening the Church doors for Sexuality Education.

Conclusion

Today Graciana and Njimafor Parish serve as the corridor and pacesetter for CSE both to adults and adolescents in the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Graciana’s actions are such that should be emulated by every member of the community. Indeed change can come from any direction provided someone who cares decides to make a bold step, just as Graciana did.