Women empowerment

Sexual health education is not only to prevent STIs including HIV, Sexual health education is another tools to empower women. Description: This action research work, using different participatory tools and techniques, helped us to gain a new experience about empowering women. Sexual health education was being offered among border crossing women who usually cross Bangladesh border to India without legal passport and visa for earning bread. And the BDR and BSF in both side of the border sexually abuse these women. Dhaka Ahsania Mission, a non-government organization is providing sexual health education including negotiation skill - among these border-crossing women, which is a peer-led intervention. The border crossing women are using these learning to their sexual life in family and in outside family. They are confident now to burgain about using condom or having non-penetrative sex. Lessons learned: 1. Sexual health education needs to be accompanied by other factors like income generation activities, sanitation etc. 2. The peer-led intervention addressing sensitive social issues needs passion and time to reach the goal and 3. Only peer education is not enough to provide professional support to the community. Recommendation: This experience recommends that a sandwich approach need to be designed for addressing sexual health issues to empower women. IGP and primary health education could be amalgamated together with sexual health education and treatment facilities for the community while gender should be a crosscutting issue to address.