Documenting and Communicating Results

Documenting the results of CSE implementation is important for a number of reasons:

  • It communicates the impact community leaders’ and members’ support had on a programme, and therefore the need to maintain and strengthen this support

  • It reinforces for community leaders and stakeholders, including funders, that their investment of time and resources were well spent

  • All implementations should be considered steps in an ongoing process. Documenting results, in addition to lessons learned, sets the stage for continuing and additional implementations, as well as scale-up plans and processes.

As progress and results are documented, it is important to communicate them to members of the community. There are a few things to consider when communicating about CSE programme implementation:

  • Timing – create a plan for how often the programme plans to communicate with the community, and communicate that plan up front. This will set the expectation for how often stakeholders will hear from the programmers. This should be a flexible plan; for example, if a programmer plans to offer one update mid-way through the implementation but questions are raised from the community, the programmer should respond to the community needs and offer an additional update.

  • Level of Detail – until a programme is completed and impacts assessed or evaluated, it is best to wait to share whether a particular implementation can be considered “successful,” based on the original goals and objectives.

  • Number and Focus of Messages -- Messages about a programme can be both primary and secondary. The primary message is the most universally compelling statement to all audiences (e.g. the need to reduce HIV). When a particular audience needs reinforcement, a primary message is often supported by secondary messages. Secondary messages often explain how the objectives of the primary message will be met. There may be several secondary messages tailored to the specific needs of an audience. For example, “The learners in the CSE programme all demonstrated knowledge about and facility with using condoms.”

(Adapted from: UNICEF, 2010 – “Advocacy Toolkit: A Guide to Influencing Decisions that Improve Children’s Lives”)

Suggestions for communicating about a CSE Programme:

  • Use evidence to write a “briefing paper” on CSE to outline why it is relevant for young people in a specific country or community that includes recommendations of how CSE can be improved by future programmes. Briefing papers can be written in collaboration with local, complementary organisations working on health or youth.

  • If working with a CSO or other organization, create an official organisational position statement on CSE, and encourage other complementary organisations to do the same.

  • Organise public launches for any papers or position statements as an opportunity to bring together decision makers and young people to share expertise and support. Use the internet and social media to create hashtags, Instagram stories, live-tweet the event to open it up to an even bigger audience.

  • Engage with the media by sharing articles and press releases with local/national TV, radio and newspapers, being sure to include young people who can speak to the impact of a programme as well as the importance of CSE.

(Adapted from: UNESCO, IPPF and The PACT, 2017 -- “We Demand More! A Sexuality Education Advocacy Handbook for Young People”)

The following table can be used to identify the messages that would be useful to communicate to various community groups and organisations:

Monitoring and Evaluation of CSE Programmes

(Source: UNESCO, IPPF and The PACT, 2017 -- “We Demand More! A Sexuality Education Advocacy Handbook for Young People”)

Resources

For additional information on the topics discussed in this section, please visit the following links:

Introducing a new CSE programme or reviewing an existing one

The Standards for Sexuality Education In Europe: Guidance For Implementation, supplements the above resource by outlining the process for developing a national school-based sexuality education programme and provides step-by-step guidance on how to introduce new or improve existing sexuality education programmes. Although connected to the European standards, the recommendations and guidance apply to programmes worldwide. It is available in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in Asia: A Regional Brief offers examples of CSE implementation in 11 countries from South, South East, and Central Asia.

Strengthening Comprehensive Sexuality Education for Young People in School Settings in Zambia: A Review and Documentation of The Scale-Up Process provides detailed case study for schools that are either beginning a new CSE programme or scaling up an existing one.

UNFPA’s Education is Empowerment offers examples of CSE implementation in India, Mongolia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Peru, Yemen, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The US CDC developed a workbook titled Community Needs Assessment, with guiding tools for determining CSE needs in a community.

Improving the Quality of SRHR Education Programmes for Young People is a readiness checklist developed by Stop AIDS Now and WPF for CSE programmers to use in communities.

The UNFPA Operational Guidance for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: A Focus on Human Rights and Gender provides a situation assessment tool with questions to ask and ideas on how to address gaps in teacher training.

IPPF’s From Evidence to Action: Advocating for Comprehensive Sexuality Education offers specific guidance on how to create positive, enabling environments for implementing CSE.

Goal setting and prioritisation

The US CDC’s Practical Use of Program Evaluation among Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Programs, Part 2 provides additional guidance on how to develop SMART goals.

UNESCO and partners’ Early and Unintended Pregnancy and The Education Sector: Evidence Review and Recommendations, discusses reducing early and unintended pregnancy, and offers recommendations on what is important to prioritise in CSE programming.

Curriculum

Promoting Gender Equality Through Textbooks: A Methodological Guide – UNESCO resource available in English, French and Arabic offering guidance on how to promote gender equality, a key goal of CSE, in all classes.

The WHO Regional Office for Europe and BZgA created a Guidance for Implementation report that outlines on pages 42-45 a foundational understanding of how lesson plans, teacher aids, and student handbooks can be developed.

General Adaptation Guidance: A Guide to Adapting Evidence-Based Sexual Health Curricula, published by ETR and the US CDC, provides general green (safe), yellow (proceed with caution) and red (unsafe) light adaptation guidance for practitioners considering making adaptations to sexual health EBIs.

Reducing Adolescent Sexual Risk: A Theoretical Guide for Developing and Adapting Curriculum-Based Programs, written by ETR Associates, offers guidance for developing, adapting and implementing curricula.

Partnerships

The Partnering Initiative and UN DESA’s Maximising the Impact of Partnerships for the SDGs: A Practical Guide to Partnership Value Creation offers a Partnership Value Assessment Tool to determine which organisations may or may not be good fits for partnering on CSE implementation.

Monitoring and evaluation

UNFPA and IPPF’s Inside and Out: Comprehensive Sexuality Education Assessment Tool can be used by community organisations to track the quality and success of CSE implementation. It is available in English, French and Spanish.

The Evaluation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education Programmes: A Focus on the Gender and Empowerment Outcomes compiles an extensive analysis of many different CSE programs across the globe.

Scaling up

CSE Scale-Up in Practice offers step-by-step guidance on effective scaling up efforts in CSE. It also provides in-depth case studies from a number of ESA countries that have implemented and scaled up their CSE.

Strengthening Comprehensive Sexuality Education for Young People in School Settings in Zambia: A Review and Documentation of The Scale-Up Process offers a detailed description of efforts to scale up CSE in Zambia.

UNESCO’s Cost and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of School-Based Sexuality Education Programmes in Six Countries offers additional, in-depth recommendations for cost-effective scaling up of CSE.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education: The Challenges and Opportunities of Scaling Up is a valuable foundational document to determine whether a community is ready to scale up a CSE programme, as well as what they will need to consider and put into place in order to be successful and sustainable.

WHO and ExpandNet’s Nine Steps for Developing a Scale-Up Strategy, available in English, French and Spanish, is a guiding document for scaling up CSE efforts. It also features worksheets that can be used in conjunction with the guide.