How educators are tackling the problems of bringing sex ed online - Siliconrepublic.com

For those teaching sexual heath online, the digital world presents challenges from building connections to navigating SEO and content bans.

Whether it is because of an unwillingness to address touchy subjects such as porn or too heavy of a focus on the biological, there is a continued call to improve sexual health education.

One proposed solution for bringing better resources to teenagers far and wide is to move sexual education online.

This was how Richie Sadlier came to launch the Sexual Health Awareness and Relationship Education (SHARE) platform. The former footballer and sports pundit is also a trained psychotherapist who worked primarily with adolescents and their parents. The seed of SHARE began in his collaboration with Elaine Byrnes, a researcher at NUI Galway who looked at sexual behaviour and consent.

Together, the pair developed a six-week programme of workshops at the secondary school St Benildus College which aimed to educate teenagers on sexual health. Over the course of two and a half years, they created and tweaked content that they were satisfied could help teenagers.

While the programme initially ran at the Dublin school, they were interested in using the course with other groups. The only issue was where. As Byrnes was in Galway and Sadlier in Dublin, they were limited by time and distance.

‘You step back and go, well how would a young person engage with online material? The answer is comfortably and effectively and quite easily’
^{– RICHIE SADLIER}

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