LCP Rex Pajenado
The youth nowadays are exposed to various sexual risks, such as health hazards brought by choice of lifestyle, sexually transmitted infections (STls), the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), unintended and repeated pregnancies. Teenage pregnancy is an extensive health, social, and economic concern. This distressing situation can be correlated with the limited means to meaningful and correct information and awareness of the youth about sexuality and reproductive health. This is crucial in their holistic formation and development from childhood dependency to adulthood independence.
The Sexually Healthy and Personally Empowered Adolescents (SHAPE-A) series aims to support the main concerns of the Adolescents Health and Development program which is to help brace young people for social, personal, and global responsibilities particularly as they are in a passage from childhood to adulthood. As part of the governor’s challenge to empower young girls, the RI District 3810 has conducted a two-day webinar series on Sexually Healthy and Personally Empowered Adolescents via Zoom video conference spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Manila Fort Santiago together with 47 co-host clubs in partnership with the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) NCR. Life-Changing Governor, DG Robert Koa graced the two-day online SHAPE-A series which ran from August 16 to 17, attended by almost 300 participants, composed of Senior Officials of District 3810, Life Changing Presidents, Club Members, Rotaractors, and Interactors.
This program aided the response to the challenge of developing responsible, healthy, and empowered adolescents. Through the competent trainers and facilitators of POPCOM, the youth learners were able to grasp the appropriate life skills and knowledge that will develop their competencies for adaptive manners to keep up and care for their health during this crucial transition stage. Protecting and promoting adolescent health, with its health priorities for women, adolescents, and children to transform, survive, and thrive, commits to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 to ensure healthy lives, and promote well-being for all at all ages. Adolescents, like all human beings from all age groups, need to be given every favorable circumstance to recognize their rights to achieve the topmost standards of social, health, and well-being, so that they will share and be responsible for greater social and economic development. This initiative by the RI District 3810 is commendable progress and an advance towards enhanced investment in sustainable health and development of the Filipino adolescents that leads to a sustainable, healthy, and productive society.
