Leeds Rhinos Foundation in partnership with Leeds City Council Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood team finished the first block of sessions from a new project aimed to help improve young men’s understanding of issues around sex and relationship education at the TryZone education centre last week.
The seven-week programme has been designed to help support young men from selected secondary schools across Leeds to better understand their vulnerabilities and to explore what they can do to change them.
Through a series of classroom and outdoor activities the ‘Tackled’ project covered sessions including puberty, body image, masculinity, emotional well-being, the dangers of online sexual content, contraception and STI’s.
Starting in November, the programme began with a fun introduction for the first group of course attendees taking part in an outdoor rugby session based at Leeds Rhinos’ training facilities in Kirsktall to help group to get to know each other and introduce the outline of the course.
Working out of the TryZone education centre and Leeds Rugby Academy in Kirsktall, the attendees have worked through a variety of sessions lead by John May from the Teenage Pregnancy Pregnancy and Parenthood Team at Leeds City Counci finishing with the final session at the stadium last week.
The specially designed course for secondary school students involved exercises exploring the impact of the media on young people and how this can affect feelings, values, attitudes and behaviour using example activities to decide what the group perceived the perfect woman/man to look like.
The programme also explored different types of relationships with a consideration of the qualities and attributes that help individuals form positive relationships.
As part of the course, the group we are able to take part in a special Yoga and mental health workshop to help with recognising individual’s signs of anger, different emotions and triggers, centred around Identifying different types of mental health and ways to relieve stress in a positive way.
The group then finished off looking at different methods of contraception to develop knowledge of how to keep safe and what sexual health support services are available.
Although primarily a sex and relationship education course, the Tackled project has also looked to develop outcomes such as promoting self-esteem, physical and emotional well-being with a focus on learning new teamwork, communication and problem solving skills throughout the course.
The partnership will be run ageing in the new year with more groups undertaking the 7 week course in January.
For more information on any of TryZone’s current project contact Janet.sylvester@leedsrugbyfoundation.org
For more information on any of the Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood teams Relationship Sex Education sessions contact Emma.newton@leeds.gov.uk