Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Workshops were funded by donation

These are the days when "men are not willing to listen to sound advice, but will heap up preachers and teaching to satisfy their itching ears…" No wonder Aware's programmes are so thwarted, their endorser is already a thwarted fellow!

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THE sex education workshops conducted by Aware at 11 secondary schools last year was fully subsidised, thanks to a donation from the Chen Su Lan Trust.

Each workshop cost between $500 and $600 but was free for the schools, which have not yet been named publicly.

Yesterday, former Aware president Constance Singam revealed to Today that $35,000 out of the $113,000 donated by the Chen Su Lan Trust last year was spent on the free Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) workshops at schools.

Asked if he was aware of the content of the CSE programme, Reverend Yap Kim Hao, the chairman of the Chen Su Lan Trust, said that he had been given a "rough outline" of the programme, but he had not seen the teaching materials. When Today showed him two pages of the CSE trainers' manual, which stated that "anal sex can be healthy" and that "homosexuality is perfectly normal", Rev Yap said that he "had no problems" with the content.

"I recognise there are dissenting views, but these have to be presented and it's up to the student to make a decision so (the trainer) is not promoting one particular view," said Rev Yap.

The 80-year-old is a retired Bishop of the Methodist Church here and currently pastoral adviser to the Free Community Church. According to the church's website, it accepts same-sex relationships and welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons. Esther Ng

From TODAY, News – Friday, 01-May-2009

1 comment:

Alan Wong said...

There are real concerns with AWARE's CSE. See my critique of CSE Instructor Guide with verbatim quotes from relevant modules of the Guide.