Mangalore: City Hosts Teen-STAR Programme, First-ever in India
 
Report and pics by Divvy Kant Upadhyay (MB)

Mangalore, Jun 19:  The first-ever Teen-STAR programmed for teenagers in India was launched in the city on Saturday at the Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore with 72 teenagers registering themselves.

The 'Teen STAR' (Sexuality Teaching in the context of Adult Responsibility) programme was brought to the city in April by Dr Hanna Klaus who is the Executive Director at the Natural Family Planning (NFP) Center of Washington DC, USA.

Daijiworld had exclusively covered the news item on the Training of Trainers' Programme that Dr Hana Klaus had conducted in April.

Speaking exclusively to Divvy Kant Upadhyay two months ago (see interview below), Dr Hana had hoped for the first TEEN STAR Centre in India to come up in Mangalore.The programme is essentially a developmental curriculum that teaches responsible decision making & communication skills in the area of sexual behavior.It aims to control the rapid spread of HIV infection in the Youth by encouraging teens to take their queries to their parents rather than outsiders.

Professor and head of Community Medicine at KMC, Dr Sajjan Somappa was the chief guest and youth health educator and senior medical officer of Yenepoya Urban Health Centre  Dr Ramachandra Bhat was the guest of honour. KMC Dean Dr C V Raghuveer also spoke at the occasion.

Associate professor of Community Medicine at KMC, Dr B Unnikrishnan who attended the TOT (Training of Trainers) in April made a presentation to the audience briefing them on the relatively new concept.The educational objectives he highlighted inculded concepts -To recognize the physiological signs of male and female fertility, to enable young people to understand emotional changes in the cycle and the feelings these changes generate, to know how to use the curriculum to facilitate cognitive and experimental learning as logical stimuli in surfacing values,  to help students learn to value the freedom and choice which are the true basis of decisions regarding sexual behavior and to win the enlightened cooperation of parents balancing their involvement with their own childs developmental needs.

Speaking to Divvy for Daijiworld, Dr Unnikrishnan explained that The TEEN-STAR Program was running succesfully in Austria,Korea,Chile, Spain, Croatia, Switzerland, France and Italy.He explains further that the Programme aims at enhancing teens self esteem,demands self discipline, teaches skills to reject peer as well as media pressure and affirms virtues to treats sex as a gift to be respected and valued.
 
He  thanked Dr Prabha Adhikari for taking the initiative and motivating Dr Hanna Klaus to visit Mangalore and conduct the training programme.Dr.Prabha who was instrumental in starting the programme also spoke to the teenagers and thier accompanying wards. 

An exclusive interview with Dr Hanna Klaus by Divvy Kant Upadhyay.

Dr Hanna Klaus is the executive director of the Natural Family Planning Centre (NFP) at Washington, DC, USA.  She is also the Workshop Director and the brain behind "Teen-STAR" programme targeting sexuality and fertility in teenagers. She has a wide-range of experience working in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries apart from India.

Official projections estimate that within next three years there'll be 10 million HIV positive people in India. Dr. Hanna firmly says that "India is on the verge of something worse. There's no place for complacency just because the prevalence rates are just above 1%.. lets not forget this is a country with 1.2 billion people!"

"Recent trends have shown that HIV/AIDS is on the rise in the productive age-group of 15-30, which means that it is the universal belt of teenager-culture and the teenagers who should be targeted with awareness and sense of security at the time they attain puberty." Dr. Hanna's brainchild the Teen-STAR program aims to counsel such teenagers.

Dr Hanna, a Gynecologist, while practicing at Missouri in USA was appalled seeing young girls aged 13 and 15 get pregnant. The physical and emotional trauma that her patients underwent pushed Dr Hanna towards creating a program that could counsel and prevent such tragedies in naïve teenagers.

Soon she developed a labour-intensive course for training teachers so that the teachers at schools and colleges could freely and effectively counsel young teenagers. Effectively running in over 35 countries in the world, the Teen STAR ( Sexuality Teaching in the context of Adult Responsibility) programme has now come to our city.

She accepts that the "theories of abstinence are tough to popularize as they need a high set of moral values and spirituality, but the land of India is known from time immemorial for these very virtues." She feels "Perhaps the rapidly changing lifestyles and increased affluence has led to a loss of these virtues resulting in youngsters especially teenagers having become very impulsive and unstable."

She stresses that "It is very important for the parents to talk to their children when the children attain puberty so that they know the right thing in an effective manner from their own parents, especially so that they don't go looking for information on sex from the wrong sources like the TV, Internet or from friends who have already gone astray.

Understanding the problem, she says "Its just not the problem with parents in India alone, parents world over find it tough and are reluctant to address issues relating to sex. But it is better if the teenagers learn about this human phenomenon from their parents or in the classroom, rather than picking it up on the streets and falling prey to diseases or instable mindsets."

She has taken note of the recent controversy over sex education in schools in India. She was told that it was perhaps the crude and vulgar representations of the subject in the books that has led to widespread protests. She feels "It is important for the Govt. of India to provide to its children wholesome holistic sexuality education but with the support and permission from parents."

She suggests that "To make sex education more effective perhaps a team of gynecologists, psychiatrists and counselors could modify the views currently presented exclusively by plain sexologists."

Dr.Hanna would love to promote the idea that sexual mating is more for Procreation rather than for recreation. "If this thought could be inculcated in the youth we could bring down the consumer culture of promoting contraceptives and could significantly bring down rates of sexually transmitted diseases."

She feels strongly that the "Rural women in India need to be empowered. Traditional male dominance needs to decline with increase in women emancipation-that's the only answer to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS before they take a monstrous proportion in India. In contrast to the rural setup she finds the urban culture of 'live-in' relationships equally dangerous to the society as well as the reproductive and mental health of the country's youth." 

She firmly believes in the policy of 'Cafeteria approach' provided for methods of contraception and wants to encourage teenage counseling and education.

"I am amazed by the keen interest and efforts of Dr Prabha Adhikari and observing the infrastructure of KMC in Mangalore, I am seeking to set up the first 'Teen-STAR core group centre' of India in the coming years in this beautiful small South Indian city of Mangalore."