48 • PART TWO: FACILITATOR’S GUIDE
Sample Questions from a Pre-Training Questionnaire:
Knowledge-Based: Do you...- Understand and know how gender issues are related to HIV vulnerability and violence?
- Know the levels of participation of children and how to encourage children’s participation in programs?
- Know the facts and common misconceptions about HIV and STIs?
- Know active learning methods for working with children?
- Possess basic counseling skills to work with children who have faced trauma and are grieving?
- Know the ethical guidelines related to confidentiality and disclosure?
- Know life skills and how to develop them in children?
- Know the basics of participatory planning, implementation and evaluation?
- Know what resources are available for life skills, children’s participation and action research?
- Know the local language so you can communicate well?
Attitude-Related (Agree or Disagree):- I find it difficult to say sorry, especially to children;
- Sex and sexuality education will make children curious, and they will experiment with sex;
- Adolescents rarely listen to adults;
- Adolescents are easily influenced by their friends;
- One should be careful talking about condoms with children; after all they do not have sex;
- Adolescents do not respect the institution of marriage and just want to have a good time;
- Abstinence is a good option for many adolescents for safe sex;
- Adolescents who get STI should be isolated so that they realize what mistakes they have made;
- Masturbation is not harmful for either girls or boys; and
- What can boys do if girls are not empowered and ready to fight for their rights?
Facilitators may have both overt and covert
attitudes towards children, which could affect their
work in guiding children to discover positive
responses to life’s challenges. One way to find out
their assumptions is to ask facilitators to complete
open-ended statements such as:
“Children should____” or “Children are____.”Facilitators’ attitudes toward their own gender and
the opposite sex, and their overt and covert
expectations regarding gender roles of men and
women could affect their responses to children.
Potentially, male and female facilitators may have
different attitudes toward men compared to
women, and consequently different attitudes
towards the role that men and women play in the
prevention and transmission of HIV.