Towards better relationships…
THE Ministry of Health has embarked on a new pilot project dubbed ‘Love Letter’, targeting couples.
It was previously scheduled to be inaugurated yesterday, at Regency Suites Hotel, but the three-day workshop, themed ‘Love the healthy way’ will now start on February 24. “Not many organisations target couples and what the Ministry of Health wants to do is touch on different issues related to health. It is providing a general understanding of the importance of being in a good relationship and fostering good health,” said Ms. Suelle Findlay Williams, one of the facilitators.
The School Health Coordinator in the Adolescent Health Unit of the Health Ministry explained that the workshop will seek to engage couples on issues that range from gender roles and responsibility, finance and relationships to sexual reproductive health, communication and abuse and its effects on family relationships.
The overall objective is to equip the participants with information to develop and maintain healthy relationships through communication and sexual responsibility, she said.
The forum aims to promote safe sex and faithfulness and best communication and relationship practices; provide a platform for young adults to ask questions relating to sex and marriage; create awareness about abuse and its effects and a butterfly effect of positive peer norms.
“We want people to establish good relationships and, for those who do not, we hope that, at the end of this, they have what they need to build a good relationship and move towards healthy lives,” Williams said.
She said a healthy life is more than a healthy diet and regular exercise and is dependent on supportive relationships.
Williams said that, after the three days, the participating couples will be required to pen a commitment, a love letter, each affirming what they learnt.
“In the olds days, couples used to write letters to each other,” she recalled, indicating that the workshop aims to bring back something of old to help couples reiterate their commitments.
The participant couples, from Regions Four (Demerara/Mahaica) and Ten (Upper Demerara/Berbice), were sourced from Help and Shelter and the others are Ministry of Health staffers and trained peer educators,” Williams said.
They include young individuals as well as some in their thirties but are in a small, intimate group of about 16 persons.
Williams said the bottom line is making people aware and the peer educators were included because they will have their skills-set bolstered and, by extension, advance the cause of the Health Ministry. (Vanessa Narine)