Tamùkke Feminists launch manual to strengthen reproductive health education

(Kaieteur News) – A new training manual on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Justice (SRHJ) is expected to provide a much needed boost for training in respective areas. The manual, which was designed by Tamùkke Feminists and the Wapichan Women’s Movement, was launched on Saturday in Georgetown. Speaking about the launching and a training of trainers session, Tamùkke Feminists’s Board of Director Renata Chuck-A-Sang described the document as “groundbreaking”.

Chuck-A-Sang pointed out that not only does the document present sexual and reproductive health information from a feminist perspective, it takes on a grassroots approach, “It really grounds itself in revealing the cultural values of a community before shaping how the material is presented,” she said pointing out that the manual works to affect the cultural values of a community while also valuing bodily autonomy and the right to choose adding that it also informed by indigenous culture and ways of doing things. “This manual is for persons who will go out into communities to conduct SRHJ Training. It contains all of the tools and guidance for effective training sessions,” Chuck-A-Sang explained, “this means that persons who are fortunate to complete this training will be better informed and better equipped to uphold their rights as individuals and assist/guide their communities on decisions regarding family planning, having healthy relations and better health seeking behaviours,” she said.

Tamùkke Feminists’ Managing Director Akola Thompson said the training manual fills a gap, “access to reproductive healthcare and education generally needs major work across Guyana,” Thompson said, “for Indigenous communities, the gaps are further compounded by their remote locations and violence in these communities fester, and there is a need for stronger response and support mechanisms”. Thompson said that as a Sexual Health and Reproductive Justice collective, Tamùkke Feminists, understood the need to create “a comprehensive toolkit grounded in our local realities,” adding that the organisation wanted to “ensure that it would be attentive to the cultural relations and needs of Indigenous people, so that it can be utilised in these communities”.