Youth Like Me: Adolescent Sexual & Reproductive Health
While recognition is growing within the international public health community about the importance of tailoring sexual health services to the specific needs of young people, youth in Ghana struggle to access the health education information and specific reproductive health services they desperately need. Marie Stopes International (MSI) has for many years been developing innovative ways to address these gaps, in collaboration with its in-country partners around the world.
In 2014, Silence Speaks and MSI developed an innovative storytelling approach to foregrounding the narratives of youth Ghana in the organization’s efforts to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health in these two countries. We supported youth in story sharing, audio recording, and location photography; they sat with our facilitators and guided the editing process. Our colleagues with MSI-PNG and MSI-Ghana facilitated additional activities to build peer education and leadership skills among the participating youth.The resulting collections of stories were used by MSI as part of its efforts to train health providers on the delivery of youth-friendly clinic services and to offer sexual health education in secondary school and other community-based settings. View selected examples below and find more on our Silence Speaks Storytelling YouTube Channel.
