UNFPA-Yemen hosts Technical Consultation Meeting on Peer Education

     The UNFPA-Yemen country office hosted a three-day-long Technical Consultation Meeting with the theme of “Learning Best Practices on Peer Education and Adopting Standards of Practice.”  The meeting was designed to benefit junior programme officers from UNFPA offices around the world. Goals included the sharing of best practices and lessons learned, the demonstration and generation of interest for scaling-up peer education approaches in a variety of settings, and reaching agreement on a process of adaptation of minimal standards in peer education.

        Abdulrahman Al-Akwa’a, minister of Youth and Sports, attended the opening ceremony and presented a speech where he welcomed participants from the various UNFPA offices.  He also thanked the UNFPA for choosing Yemen for this important meeting, which represented an excellent opportunity for Yemeni youth to learn from their peers.

      Further, Al-Akwa'a urged Yemeni youth participants to make their best effort at benefiting from the presence of their international peers at the meeting.  He emphasized his determination to adapt Y-Peer education as a main activity for his ministry in the coming years. Al-Akwa'a went on to explore challenges that face Yemen, such as demography, poverty, education, and gender inequality.  

      Hans Obdeijn, UNFPA representative in Yemen, expressed his pride that Yemen was selected to host this important UNFPA event. 

      “When I was in New York this summer and learned about this meeting at headquarters, I expressed my keen interest to give Yemen this opportunity. And I thank our colleagues for that. I am proud that our CO [country office] can play such an important role in furthering Y-Peer initiatives in UNFPA", Obdeijn said. 

      He continued, "I understand that the programme will include small group sessions, plenary sessions, panel discussions, debates, and poster presentations. It will address a broad range of key areas with contributions from various disciplines including programmatic and service delivery issues related to enhancing quality of peer education. Other participants will be requested to present their work either in the form of a poster or brief presentation, as part of the related symposia and poster session.

      Here in Yemen, we have a rather modest experience on this issue. And this is an excellent opportunity for Yemeni young people to deepen their knowledge about it and share it later with their peers,” Obdeijn said.

       Obdeijn noted that the Ministry of Youth and Sports has been one of the UNFPA’s key partners in Yemen. “I am sure that the minister will support this new trend in education and encourage its unique activities for the benefit of Yemeni young people,” said Obdeijn.

      “We are at UNFPA willing to support and assist our partners at his ministry and other NGOs to work together on the best implementation of these activities especially since we are in about to start our new country programme cycle 2007-2011,” Obdeijn concluded.

Back to top