The POEMA project (Project for Opposing Early Marriages) takes place in the mountainous areas of northern Vietnam with the aim of reducing early marriages and school dropouts through education.
At the end of September the meetings began in Lien Viet Secondary School and Xin Man High School in the commune of Coc Pai, which have a total of 1048 students aged between eleven and eighteen. In total, these meetings will be nine and will end in December, involving twenty-eight classes of approximately twenty-five to thirty students each.
Seventeen teachers were trained thanks to GTV for the occasion, together with representatives of the Woman Union, the Youth Union, the Department of Education, health personnel, law enforcement and local authorities, during meetings in April and May with two experts in the field of gender studies. These training sessions allowed then the school staff, the experts and the local project manager to designate a detailed program to propose to the students.
In fact, each meeting deals with a different topic, involving students through various types of activities, such as drawing, commenting on short movies, creating brief theatrical performances and participating in small games that help make learning interactive and facilitate  the discussion. Furthermore, to allow students to tackle some more sensitive topics with less shyness, the classes get divided between males and females.
The main themes that were addressed in the first three meetings focused on sexual and gender education, therefore talking about discrimination, violence, stereotypes and social norms; on the prevention of early marriages, explaining the causes, consequences and possible remedies and finally the dangers of consanguineous unions.
To enrich the educational experience, GTV has already delivered a computer set, informative posters and around eighty books on various topics related to the project, such as the prevention of early marriages, children's rights, sexual education and gender equality. The local GTV staff is committed to assisting teachers in organizing lessons and providing children with a healthy snack, choosing local products with the aim of reducing the use of plastic packaging.