Development of a Customized Sexuality Education Curriculum for Clinicians at Los Quinchos Orphanage in Managua, Nicaragua

The Team Nicaragua course offers students the opportunity to combine in-class learning and experiential practices. This course also serves masters level graduate students seeking international fieldwork experience. Team Nicaragua partnered with Los Quinchos Orphanage in Nicaragua, which provides boys (N=40) and girls (N=22) aged 5-17 years with safe housing and education. Most children experienced physical and sexual assault by their parents and many were forced into prostitution and/or the drug trade. Given this history of sexual assault and prostitution, the program director identified a need for a customized sexually education curriculum to be instituted by Counselors and Educators. The goal of this project was to conduct a needs assessment of clinicians at Los Quinchos, in order to develop a customized sexuality education curriculum to help them better serve their clients. Clinicians (N=20) were invited by the Director to attend an information session, which introduced sexuality education lessons. They were then asked to provide feedback with respect to the applicability of these lessons and the needs of their clients with respect to sexuality education. Complete data was collected from 15 clinicians and a number of themes emerged regarding sexuality education topics, including a need for lessons that address myths and folklore, the influence of television on perceptions of healthy sexuality, body image and normal development, hygiene, safer sex, and abuse prevention. As a result, a curriculum of 3 lessons, aimed at ages 7-10, 11-13, and 14-17 were developed and will be used in future train the trainer sessions at Los Quinchos.