Sexual development is a development process that cannot be separated from the whole human development process that occurs along the life time. The importance of sexual literacy, especially among teenagers, encouraged Family Care and Education Study Group (PPdK) at Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga to carry on training activity for teenagers titled “Sexual Assertiveness Communication Training to Prevent Pre-Marital Sex Behavior among Teenagers”.
Training activity was successfully held on last August 13th -14th 2021 through the virtual platform. The activity involved 38 students from SMA Negeri 1 Tanggul, Kabupaten Jember and it led by Herdina Indrijati, M.Psi., Psikolog. In her opening speech, Herdina, who dedicated herself as a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga for more than 20 years, said that such activity aimed to increase teenagers’ knowledge and skill regarding sexual assertiveness communication in order to reduce the prevalence of pre-marital sexual behavior among teenagers. Furthermore, Herdina said that the training activity was a form of concern from the Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga to larger society, given a fact that the prevalence of pre-marital sexual behavior among teenagers is increasing nowadays.
The training activity that was held in two days involved two experts to give training materials. Rhajiv Nur Ilham, S.Psi. was responsible to educate about how the optimal sexual development process is among teenagers and Yustisiana Hidayati, M.Psi., Psikolog was responsible to transfer knowledge and skill of how to be assertive in sexual behavior.
The training activity involved few processes, starting from pre-test, presentation, roleplay, and the post-test at the end. Pre-test and post-test were implemented to know about how knowledge and skill of students are before and after the training. Whereas, roleplay was implemented to make sure that students are capable to implement the knowledge they have obtained during the training.
Even though the activity was solid, the representative of SMA Negeri 1 Tanggul expressed how grateful and happy they were for what Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga has done.
“We believe that this (knowledge and skill about sexual assertiveness communication) is really important for our students. We know that it is really common that teenagers start romantic relationship and we need to prevent unwanted behavior related to this particular topic to not happen in the future” said Dora Indriana, S.Pd., M.Pd. as the Head of SMA Negeri 1 Tanggul.
At the end of the training, Herdina said that She hope that the Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga could give more contribution to larger society and keep the good work to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the community empowerment programs.
