3.2. Intervention
Based on the empowerment education approach, the intervention was divided into three phases. Phase 1 is the listening phase where the adolescents act as co-learners with the health educators and contribute their experiences on substance use. Phase 2 is the dialogue and reflection phase where through discussions and group dialogue, they learn the root causes of adolescent substance use. Phase 3 is the action and reflection phase where the adolescents identify a substance use-related issue they wish to address in their communities and come up with creative strategies to address these issues. They develop and carry out a group service activity or project by implementing the project ideas and then reflect on the project they have carried out and how it has affected them.In addition, formative research was carried out to obtain adolescents’ views on the intervention curriculum design and delivery and their understanding of specific components and characteristics of the intervention curriculum. The intervention group received weekly sessions every Saturday for 12 weeks according to Freire’s empowerment education model developed in these three phases. A total of 11 session activities were designed in this study, as outlined in Participants completed questionnaires for the baseline prior to session 1, the 2-month follow-up at the time of session 8, and the 3-month follow-up one week after the completion of session 11 (