For a long time , ZINGO had struggled to review the Treasuring of the Gift of Sexuality (TTG) Manual. The need to review the manual had been informed by a number of factors which include but are not limited to:

• The current copy does not incorporate the Hindu teachings on sex and sexuality. During the time of developing the current edition, the Hindu faith’s participation was no so much pronounced in the interfaith network. With the Hindu faith now on board, it has become necessary to accommodate their views in this very valuable manual for those working with youths and adolescents.
• Though the current manual has teachings from the Bahai faith, little consultation took place with the leadership within the Bahai faith when the current version was been compiled. Consequently a lot of reservations were made by the Bahais who felt there were a lot of contradictory statements in the manual that ended up confusing the youths more than it helped them. It should be noted that the issue of consistency in as far as the faith teachings and the illustrations in the manual were concerns raised not only by the Bahai faith but also by the other faiths.
• Over all, there has been the feeling that though the current edition of the manual was intended for the youth within a faith set up, church or otherwise, the manual was more secular than faith-based in nature and may be that explained the reason why the primary users of the manual have been secular youth groups e.g. Youth Activist Organization (YAO), Anti AIDS Clubs in schools run by Youth Alive Zambia and so forth. Within the faith setting, only the youth department of Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) has been on record as having used it.

Against this background, revision of the manual was always top on the agenda. During the last quarter and working in partnership with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the revision of the manual started. A consultant was hired to work with young people and religious leaders in Churches, Mosques and Temples in revising the manual and has since provided us with a summary report on the revision exercise.

The revision process will include holding Focused Group Discussions with young people in congregations to find out how widely the manual has been used within faith based youth groups, ascertain areas of improvement or changes to be made to   the manual, research on holy scriptures to reinforce topics in the manual and pre-test of the draft second version of the manual.

The final deliverable of this activity is a draft second version of the manual that will be ready for printing and dissemination. ZINGO with its partners will engage other partners to fund printing of 1000 of the manual for dissemination and roll out its training.

Leveraging the funds made available by the Alliance to revise the manual, a US based organization, YouthNet, and FHI/POLICY Project supported by USAID, has requested ZINGO to submit a proposal for US$ 20,000 to develop Sexual Reproductive Health Guidelines that will go hand in hand with the usage of TTG in addressing Adult-Youth relationships in the congregations. The proposal has since been submitted and approved and the project is supposed to commence mid October to end in March 2006.

ZINGO Secretariat