L-R: Choden Lhamo B146 and Tashi Chonzom B263

(Choden is a grad of SMD, now going to university in Kathmandu and serving as our Librarian. She plans to teach at SMD.Tashi Chonzom B263 graduated from Grade 10 in spring 2008. She is serving as a "Senior", doing a Gap Year and giving service to SMD. With luck, she may be able to go overseas on scholarship in 2009-2010. )

Sex education in our school was first done by some volunteers from the University of Montreal. They wrote a programme and trained some SMDers to teach it. Over the years,  more volunteers from Canada came. They re-taught the programme and most recently, they re-wrote the programme. Then they left some reference books where lots of information is included. It is helping us a lot. We are very thankful to them for their help towards our school. Now, some of the Seniors and our two Health Workers are continuing the training for everyone in the school. 

Sex education is a different kind of study which is not only related to sex but also about the body and its changes. At SMD, sex education has been offered as a subject for several years. As we are the kids from Himalayas, it was hard at first to attend the sex ed class because we Himalayan people are not open-minded and talking about sex is taken as a very bad thing in the wider (Nepali) society. All the schools in Nepal don't have the opportunity to get some knowledge about sex. So, we are very proud of it.

Anatomical Chart They Made For Classes

Kids in Class

Now we know a lot and we now realize that sex education is very important. Sex education class has made us much more clear about sex and clarified the doubts we had. Especially we learnt a lot about sexual abuse. We are now full secure about our body and its changes, physical and mental. This class has solved lots of problems for us and cleared up wrong ideas and superstitions. This has made us more open minded. We came to know about the genital parts, their functions and different remedies of sexuality of the both male and female.

 In the sex education class, our opinions and questions are always welcome and our problems and suggestions, too,  which is a very good way to learn. We also have suggestion or problem box where we can put a piece of paper mentioning our problems and feed back too in case kids feel uncomfortable to say it in front of all the class. This class has made us more secure and familiar with our own body and its changes. We are very happy to have this class.

By Tashi Chonzom B263 (Senior)