Secondary schools One Health training of trainers: One Health education initiative for pastoralist students in Somalia

Hared, Y.A. and Abdullahi, S. 2025. Secondary schools One Health training of trainers: One Health education initiative for pastoralist students in Somalia. Nairobi, Kenya. ILRI.

The One Health Education Initiative for pastoralist students in Somalia aims to address critical health education gaps within Somali pastoralist communities by incorporating One Health principles into secondary school curricula in the Awdal and Benadir regions. The initiative focuses on equipping teachers with the necessary knowledge and tools to educate students on vital health topics such as hygiene, disease prevention, and safe human-animal interactions. It will achieve this by developing a comprehensive facilitator manual tailored to pastoral settings, organizing teacher training workshops, and creating a monitoring framework to track the integration of One Health concepts over six months.

The workshops, held in Borama (October 30–November 3, 2024) and Mogadishu (January 15–19, 2025) trained 35 teachers who turn educated over 2,000 students. Through this process, the program seeks to empower students to improve the health and well-being of their communities.

The initiative also aims to overcome challenges such as limited One Health knowledge. Plans are in place to scale up the program, secure policy support, and ensure its sustainability through ongoing training, collaboration with ministries, and robust monitoring and evaluation.