Trust in Aunties: Testimony and Counselling Through Teenage Mothers

This 36-page document shares the experience of the “Aunties Project” in Cameroon, an initiative to train teenage mothers through peer education. Formerly, aunts took care of the sexual education of young girls in different communities in the country, but this tradition has largely been lost. The project recruited and trained teenage mothers to give testimony on their own experiences and advice to other adolescents in their communities and schools to educate them about risky sexual behaviour and to promote HIV prevention and family planning. This document explains the approach and describes necessary steps, from situation analysis to monitoring and evaluation.

According to the document, a baseline study conducted in 2000 by the German development agency GTZ-supported health programme in Cameroon revealed that teenage pregnancies and risky sexual behaviour are widespread and urgently need an appropriate public health response. Adolescents and especially girls do not have any experienced adults to ask for information or advice, and the traditional role of the aunt - to provide moral and sexual education - is no longer functional. Thus, the idea was developed to recruit teenage mothers and to train them as “little aunties", able and willing to inform and counsel their peers in the neighbourhood and in the schools.

The project aimed to capitalise on the experience and the commitment of teenage mothers, while also benefiting the mothers themselves. According to the document, the involvement of “victims" in prevention campaigns is a valuable concept if handled with respect, sensibility, and responsibility.

The document outlines the following key steps to implementing the Aunties Project:

1. Situation analysis or baseline study
2. Mobilisation
3. Training
4. Building local associations and agreement on rules and regulations
5. Activities in schools, the neighbourhood, and individual youth counselling
6. Public Relations (PR)) activities in print media, and on radio and TV
7. Follow up, monitoring, and evaluation of the ongoing programme
8. The necessary support structure and budget

The document offers the following lessons learned:

• Training should be for teenagers - young women can participate, but care should be given so that older members do not overshadow the teenagers.
• Training young men is difficult - based on the Cameroonian experience, the organisers would not recommend training young men.
• The area of intervention is the immediate vicinity - the area of intervention of the association should best be within walking distance of members’ homes.
• Giving testimony, teaching, and counseling is the "aunties'" role - it is important to underline that the teenagers can tell their own story, that they can transmit the knowledge they have gained during the training or from the information material, but that others have the right to make their own choices.
• Follow-up is crucial - it is not sufficient simply to train the teenage mothers, to hand out educational material, and to explain the rules. They must be accompanied along the way for a period of time, albeit with decreasing intensity.
• Low support structure and budget - in order to maintain the associations as independent bodies and to keep costs low, only a small team of permanent experts should run the supporting organisations.
• Reliable lines of communication - it is important to provide intellectual and moral support to the members of the different associations and even to visit them in case of an emergency.
• Support for a limited time - acting as a trained teenage mother is not a lifelong role in a community.