Fundación Kaleidos

In Argentina 80% of high school students say they do not have access to Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) and 60% of the teachers say they are not trained enough to teach CSE. This situation is repeated in other Latin American countries. Not receiving sexual education at school results in situations of gender violence, unintentional pregnancies and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. 

We propose to develop “El Deconstructor” a CSE digital platform for teachers with resources and materials to teach and empower teenagers to know and defend their sexual and reproductive rights. 

It aims to solve the existing problem of lack of sex education for our adolescent population. It can be scaled to all spanish speaking countries, so that every teenager can make decisions about their body, can choose how to live their lives and denature abuse situations. 

Lack of CSE is one of the main causes for adolescent unintended pregnancies. In Argentina 13% of all babies are born to mothers under the age of 19 and 7 out of 10 adolescent pregnancies are unintended. Young parents and their children face social isolation and exclusion from vital public support leading to poor outcomes across the system: 50% of teens who become parents drop out of school before the baby is born and only 38% complete high school. The expected income of women who do not finish high school is 40% lower than their peers. Only 38% of women who became mothers as teens are employed. Babies born to teen parents achieve worse educational outcomes than their peers. 63% of Argentina's children and adolescents are living below the poverty line.

This derives in non compliance of sexual and reproductive rights, which leads to the reproduction of gender inequalities and violence, and the intergenerational reproduction of poverty.

El Deconstructor seeks to offer an appealing digital program specially designed for teachers so that they can have different innovative tools to approach CSE throughout the curriculum. 

El Deconstructor is a Spanish-speaking digital platform with innovative content for teachers to work on CSE. It will have three sections: training, resources for working with adolescents and a space for exchange and collaboration between peers. They will include:

• Interactive game for teenagers with a teacher guide.

• Materials and videos specially designed for teachers.

• Virtual training course for teachers.

• Virtual training course for teenagers.

• Fictional short films to work the main contents of CSE curriculum.

The material will be prepared and designed to enrich and support teachers who must work on CSE in distance or hybrid environments. 

The final goal is to strengthen the capacity of each school and organization that works with teenagers for promoting adolescents rights, seeking to reduce unintentional pregnancies, gender inequality and stereotypes.

The platform will integrate different existing processes and technologies, which will allow synchronous and asynchronous experiences to exist. It will seek to guarantee the best UX / UI practices and the best technologies to carry out the project. 

Some of these can be: Wordpress Design + Template CERA + Slack and possible integration with LMS Platform, Zoom, and / or Moodle for training.

According to a study by FLACSO and UNESCO, the main barrier for the implementation (65%) of CSE in Latin American countries is the lack of teacher training policies. 

Young people and teachers demand more CSE in the region. Only 13 out of 23 countries have a CSE program and half of them have curricular content that does not adequately include gender, sexual rights and sexual diversity. Likewise, only 6 out of 23 countries allocate a budget for CSE and only half of the countries have teacher training programs.

The final beneficiaries will be Spanish-speaking adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18. The direct beneficiaries are teachers (trained or in training). In Argentina alone there are almost 400.000 high school teachers.

El Deconstructor will expand the scope of CSE by improving the quality of its implementation. It will offer teachers innovative materials and resources to work with adolescents, promoting the creation of collaborative experiences.

As Juan Marques, Organon Latin America`s medical director, mentions in an interview for MIT Technology Review, one of the main challenges in Latin America is teenage unintentional pregnancy. In the world there are 16 million pregnancies each year in girls and adolescents. Technology can help create support systems for adolescents with which they can receive information to prevent pregnancy. Teenagers usually search the internet, but the most appropriate information is not always there. It is important to have trained adults who can accompany adolescents both in person and remotely (due to covid pandemic social isolation UNFPA projects an increase in unintended pregnancies in the world).

El Deconstructor will have a positive  impact on the lives of teenagers by the formation of strategic actors with updated training in CSE that can defend and guarantee their rights, seeking to reduce gender inequality, gender violence and unintentional pregnancies.

Fundación Kaleidos has more than 18 years of experience accompanying teenage mothers and fathers as well as working with high school teachers and health professionals. 

Sources:

https://www.argentina.gob.ar/e...

https://www.argentina.gob.ar/s...

https://argentina.unfpa.org/si...

 https://revistaeypp.flacso.org...

CSE was one of the least worked contents during the pandemic due to its difficulty to be approached remotely. El Deconstructor will support teachers to adapt their strategies to address CSE main contents: body care, affectivity, gender, diversity and rights, in a virtual / hybrid format.

Through an interactive game, tutorial videos, booklets with activities and virtual and self-administered courses, teachers will be able to access the training they demand as well as materials for classroom work.

El Deconstructor will allow teachers to work remotely on CSE contents, offering not only information but also a space for peer collaboration.

We’ve selected the growth stage because many of the materials that will be available on the digital platform have already been developed and are being successfully used by teachers: virtual game with teacher guide, virtual courses and booklets to work CSE remotely.

The platform will integrate these proven materials with new tools that we are seeking to produce with the MIT SOLVE fund. 

We believe that MIT SOLVE will allow us to grow from reaching mostly argentinean teachers to reaching worldwide Spanish speaking teachers and professionals, as well as to form collaborative communities between CSE referents from different schools, organizations and countries.

We also believe that the MIT SOLVE technical mentoring will help El Deconstructor become a worldwide reference for teachers to adapt their CSE pedagogy.

The platform we want to create proposes an innovative solution to a problem that is longstanding and deeply rooted in Latin America: the lack of access to Comprehensive Sexual Education, one of the main causes of unintentional pregnancy in adolescence. 

We propose an innovative approach: not just offering information but using technology to offer experiences. We believe it is not possible to change attitudes and behaviors if we do not manage to pass the experiences through our body and emotions. 

El Decontructor will make available to teachers various resources and proven strategies that seek to generate experiences in adolescents. Every resource has been already used with teachers and teenagers and are designed for remote or hybrid formats.

With El Deconstructor we will reach, through adults, more adolescents and young people in an interactive, dynamic and playful way. 

There is currently no Spanish-speaking virtual platform that not only hosts the content, resources and dynamics but also forms a community of peers that can exchange and create new collaborative solutions.

We strongly believe in the power of technology and gaming to create innovative experiences to address issues such as CSE, violence prevention and the use of contraceptive methods.

• At the moment we are serving a community of 5,000 teachers that are specially interested in CSE mostly located in argentina.

• In one year we will be serving 25% of Argentine high school teachers, aprox. 100,000 and we will start serving Latin American teachers, aprox. 20,000.

• In five years we will be reaching a significant number of high school teachers from Latin America and the Caribbean: 1,000,000.

- Full-time staff: 1

- part-time staff: 4

- contractors or other workers: 7

Based on the 18 years experience developed with the Jakairá project (Fundación Kaleidos in alliance with the Swiss Foundation Children Action), our team was able to understand the characteristics and needs of the population whom we work with.

The Jakairá project has two action lines: the accompaniment of adolescents who are pregnant/mothers and fathers and the sensitization/awareness of the community about teenage pregnancy, motherhood and fatherhood, with a deep work on comprehensive sexual education.

For the last 6 years we have developed workshops in schools, sports clubs, health centers and other teenage oriented organizations and we have learnt about the needs of adults who work with young people. 

Our team is made up of different professionals (social workers, psychologists, communication, educators, teachers), all with great experience working with teachers and teenagers on Comprehensive Sexual Education.

Fundación Kaleidos is a respectful and caring organization that embraces diversity and empowers everyone to work under its shared values of excellence, equity, respect and under a rights and gender approach.

As an employer, Fundación Kaleidos guarantee that all applicants will receive equal consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age or national or ethnic origin.

We appreciate diversity and we strive to create a human centered environment in which everyone feels valued and respected. 

As we mentioned before, we are applying to Solve mainly to be able to learn from a powerful network. We are willing to access mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks. 

We believe that for our solution to be successful we need to be coached by the best technological professionals and to take advantage of the media exposure Solve can offer.