Learning from Philippines!

On last June, YSNAP got a chance to learn from Family Planning Organization of the Philippines about youth mobilisation. Philippines is one of the country where young people and particularly young people in SRHR movement involve meaningfully.

We were visiting three of FPOP’s chapters; Iloilo, GenSan, and Tandang Sora and met a lot of dynamic young people!

Outreach activity by FPOP Iloilo chapter

The youth network in Gensan chapter where young people from different activism has worked together to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.

Two dynamics young people in GenSan, Marie and Fitz who facilitated session on youth’s sexuality.

In the mid of our visit, we were having a dinner with some youth advocates in Manila. They shared a lot to us their experience working with youth’s SRHR and Reproductive Health Bill that has not yet been passed by Congress in Philippines for 14 years! The dinner was nice and we got a lot of insight how YSNAP can build youth network in regional level.

Our last visit is to Tandang Sora chapter where at that time we visited them, they were doing outreach and mobile clinics to young Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) and Transgender (TG) community.

To sum up, it’s fun to be in Philippines where young people are very dynamic and have a lot of room to explore!

Rocking Malaysia!

Y-SNAP in Malaysia recently got a chance to conduct capacity building in national level. 19 young people from all around Malaysia came and learn about SRHR for five days!

a lot of things discussed and all of them were agreed that youth participation is a must to ensure that the access to Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Youth Friendly services are widely available.

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Support young people leadership on HIV and AIDS!

When it comes to youth leadership, what  is the first thing thatcomes to  your mind? Some people say that youth leadership is very much relevant to young people who mostly travel to other countries. Do you think so? Thursday, 8th December 2011 night, in a small coffee shop in Selangor, we conducted a discussion to give our input to CrowdOutAIDS. It was attended by four young men aged 19-24 and the discussion was very vibrant and dynamic!

Our discussion was lead by Firdaus from FRHAM (Federation of Reproductive Health Associations Malaysia), he’s a youth leader and also one of the Regional Council Youth Member of IPPF ESEAOR. In this discussion, he invited his friend and we talked much about young people’s involvement and leadership particularly within the HIV AIDS movement in Malaysia.

Firdaus informed  that the Malaysia government in the past had conducted  a very big event to invite one million young people to gather in “Perhimpunan Sejuta Belia”, it was a  government initiative to approach young people. But they noted that when working with young people, the common problem is the project would be conducted by adults and most of these project do  not sustain for a longer period because of lack of youth involvement in the decision making process.

The participants in this gathering, revealed that young people in Malaysia still lack knowledge toward HIV AIDS. It is a taboo to talk about sex and in addition it is weird for young people, particularly boys to join HIV AIDS movement or programs. Culturally it is a norm that adults  do not  listen or give importance to young people’s opinions on many issues , which makes materializing youth adult partnership very difficult. .

One of the ideas proposed was to work with the media and expression via music to promote and raise youth’s awareness toward HIV and AIDS. Aside from that, partnership with private companies is a must since they have the power to reach a lot of working youth.

These vibrant young people from Malaysia  have made an action to combat HIV AIDS. Can you think of an action that can be made in your country, guys?