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\u201cAHAPPY is trying to shape us into people who love God, our neighbours and ourselves.\u201d Eric is enthusiastic as he talks about the AJAN HIV and AIDS Prevention Program for Youth. His thin hands gesticulate expressively as he makes his main point about AHAPPY: \u201cThe content shapes a complete person, a person who can make a change in society, who can embrace diversity in others, who will help others\u2026 so a complete person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eric doesn\u2019t have it easy. Like all the students of St Aloysius High School in Langata, Nairobi, he is bright but disadvantaged. One of the entry criteria of St Al\u2019s is that you are an orphan with one or both parents lost to AIDS and that you come from Kibera, known as one of the largest, if not the largest, slum in Africa.<\/p>\n
In fact, another reason Eric likes AHAPPY is because \u201cI learned new ways of dealing with personal stress and pressures from our background that affect the way I learn in class.\u201d<\/p>\n
St Aloysius is one of the many schools in Africa that appreciate AHAPPY for the way it imparts knowledge, life skills and values that enable young people to make healthy life choices. The students of St Al\u2019s discuss the AHAPPY modules in small groups called \u2018families\u2019. Eric belongs to the family in the final year, whom I meet for a chat to see why they like AHAPPY.<\/p>\n
One of the selling points of the program is that it is written in a language the students can easily relate to. For Colin, another student, \u201cthe AJAN program is very helpful because it is not theories but daily experiences we live and they are written in a way we can understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Essentially AHAPPY transmits messages the teenagers so want to hear \u2013 messages about their potential to direct the course of their own life and to become somebody who can make a positive difference in the world around them. They keep coming back to the impact of the program on the way they look at themselves: self-awareness, self-confidence, self-esteem\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the topics I benefited from is how well do I know myself? Why do I go to school? What am I for?\u201d says Prudence.<\/p>\n
Imelda chimes in: \u201cThe AHAPPY generation is about self-esteem, the realisation of goodness in me and do I appreciate and like myself and my behaviour. We also see how our self-esteem can be affected by the environment, by parents, teachers, friends and leaders and what they say about you. If people say negative things about you, avoid them, stay with people who love, appreciate and encourage you.\u201d<\/p>\n
All are keenly aware that they need a strong armour of self-esteem to resist the onslaught of peer pressure. \u201cWe find the confidence to speak out, to make decisions right. As teenagers you face peer pressure and in AHAPPY you learn how to say the words straight,\u201d says Caroline.<\/p>\n
Asked which value she would choose from those expounded by the AHAPPY program, Angela chooses fortitude: \u201cIt has given me the courage to stand by my words. If I say \u2018no\u2019, I mean it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another thing about which the group is in passionate agreement is that it is so good to know that God loves you. This, for Imelda, is \u201cwhat boosts you most\u201d.<\/p>\n
Eric agrees: \u201cI know that whoever you are, whatever background you may come from, whatever obstacles you may have, whatever weaknesses, God still loves you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their firm faith is ultimately what bolsters the teenagers\u2019 self-esteem. \u201cIt is all about seeing ourselves the way God sees us,\u201d says Colins. \u201cWe should not see ourselves the way people see us. When people say we are failures and cannot make it, this does not mean we are so. God sees us as people who can make it and we are equal in his sight. No matter if people abandon you, your family, friends, you know God still loves you and you are a child of God.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAHAPPY is trying to shape us into people who love God, our neighbours and ourselves.\u201d Eric is enthusiastic as he talks about the AJAN HIV and AIDS Prevention Program for Youth. His thin hands gesticulate expressively as he makes his main point about AHAPPY: \u201cThe content shapes a complete person,<\/p>\n