National Geographic

132 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • FEBRUARY 2018BY DAVID BRINDLEYPHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZNGM MAPS##### Jefrin Bayona is already running latefor school and it’s just after 6 a.m. “Ibarely slept last night,” the 15-year-oldstudent says. “The baby woke me upat 10, 12, four in the morning.” Classesstart early here in the rural plains of northeast-ern Colombia. Standing in the dark kitchen ofhis home, Jefrin drags a hand down his tired facebetween sips of hot chocolate. Estiven, his infantson, silently sits in a baby carrier on the sparseliving room floor.Fortunately for Jefrin his early foray intofatherhood ends today. He’s participating in animmersive school program thataims to prevent teenage pregnancy.“Estiven” is actually a robotic babydesigned to simulate a needy one-month-old—crying at programmedintervals day and night to provokestudents to feed and burp the babyand change its diaper. The respons-es are tracked and recorded, andstudents are graded on how quicklythey react. A baby left unattended for too longwill shut down, affecting the student’s grade.Jefrin has taken care of the baby for the past48 hours, and the typically outgoing and buoyantteen is clearly exhausted. He arrives at school fiveminutes after the bell and hands the baby off tofellow student, and designated mother, AlexandraGuerrero, 15, for the next two-day shift.Worldwide some 17 million teenage girls givebirth every year, facing increased risk of healthcomplications during pregnancy as well as life-long economic challenges for themselves andtheir families.Education and dreams of advancement areoften derailed for these young mothers. LatinAmerica has the third highest teenage pregnancyrate in the world. While the global rate has de-clined over the past decade, the pace of decline inLatin America lags behind that of other regions.In Colombia one in five mothers is between 15and 19 years old; poor rural teens are at the great-est risk of early pregnancy.That brings us here, to the low-slung concreteclassrooms at a public school in the small townof Tame, Colombia. The program that Jefrin,Alexandra, and 100 of their ninth-grade class-mates, ages 14 to 16, are enrolled in—with theirparents’ consent—aims to prevent early pregnan-cies. In addition to the two-day simulated-babyexercise, students undergo 30 hours of instruc-tion, from basic sex education and contraceptiveuse to discussion of gender stereotypes and roles,domestic violence, and family budgeting. Stu-dents have to pass a final exam on these topics andwrite an essay or shoot a video on their experienc-es with the babies.“Sex education and the baby sim-ulation are both important; theyreinforce each other,” says CamilaGuzmán, director of the program¿Bebé? ¡Piénsalo Bien!—or Baby?Think It Over!—in Colombia. “Theobjective isn’t to scare the students.We want to create a consciousnessabout sex and pregnancy. It’s OKfor them to have kids—when they’re ready.”The robotic babies were developed in the Unit-ed States more than 20 years ago, and the pro-gram has been implemented around the world.But it is relatively expensive—costing more than$100 per student here in Colombia and requiringmultiple instructors. That raises questions ofscalability in developing countries with scarceresources. Yet the program has proved effective.In a study of more than 1,400 student partici-pants in one region of Colombia, the programreduced the teen pregnancy rate by 40 percent.After the weeklong course Alexandra, whoplans to pursue engineering in college but ad-mits, “I really want to be an actress,” is deter-mined to delay motherhood. “I don’t want tohave a baby now. I’m not capable of taking careof it,” she says. “Maybe when I’m 25 or 26 and Ifinish studying.” j``````COLOMBIA``````NORTHAMERICA``````SOUTHAMERICAPACIFICOCEAN