Deliver + Enable Toolkit: Scaling-up Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has gained global recognition as a vital effort to empower adolescents and young people; enable them to improve and protect their health, well-being, and dignity; and support them in developing critical thinking skills, citizenship, and equal, healthy, and positive relationships. This toolkit offers guidance and resources on ways to deliver CSE for children, adolescents, and youth in non-formal and formal settings and encourage other stakeholders to develop and implement CSE policies and programmes.

Developed by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the publication is primarily intended for use by staff of IPPF Member Associations and Regional Offices such as: youth programmers and project coordinators; other staff members and volunteers involved in the design, implementation, or monitoring of CSE initiatives; and peer educators and other community-based volunteers. It can also be used by other sexual and reproductive health organisations, CSE and education programme leads (public and private), and the broader development community – including United Nations agencies that are working to improve CSE access for children, adolescents, and young people.

CSE is defined in this toolkit as a holistic, developmental and age appropriate, culturally and contextually relevant, and scientifically accurate learning process grounded in a vision of human rights, gender equality, sex positivity, and citizenship that is aimed at:

• Empowering children and young people to uphold their own rights and the rights of others and to contribute to achieving an equal, diverse, compassionate, and just society;
• Enabling children and young people to make decisions about their health and access key sexual and reproductive health services; and
• Enhancing children's and young people's capacity to engage in equal, happy, healthy, fulfilling, and consensual relationships and experiences.

The toolkit has three sections:

Section A. Delivering CSE for children, adolescents, and youth in non-formal and formal settings - this section offers guidance on delivering CSE programming looking at: a) time requirements, b) age-appropriate content adapted to the context, with a detailed outline of key learnings for different age groups, c) the best approaches and methods to foster effective learning, d) the stakeholders involved in CSE, e) the setting where the education is provided, and f) examples of interventions, including those using participatory approaches and peer educators.

Section B. Enabling others to develop, implement, and monitor CSE interventions - this section offers guidance to those who are enablers of CSE. It looks at the characteristics of effective programmes and enabler roles such as advocacy/advisory roles, training/coaching, and curriculum adaptation.

Section C: Questions and answers on CSE - this section includes a selection of frequently asked questions on CSE and suggests some possible answers.

The final section of the toolkit offers a list of resources from IPPF and other organisations.