Fòs Feminista partners with AMAZE LAC to launch an awards program to strengthen the use of digital tools to equip adolescents and young people with information and healthy attitudes about their changing bodies, sex, and relationships
Digital platforms have become one of the main sources of information for adolescents and youth. Leveraging the educational potential that social media content can offer and responding to the need for quality sexual health knowledge, the AMAZE Latin America and Caribbean (AMAZE LAC) platform was created to harness the power of digital media to provide young people around the globe with medically accurate, age-appropriate, affirming, and honest sex education they can access directly online-regardless of where they live or what school they attend.
Fòs Feminista has been a key partner of AMAZE LAC in supporting the development and wide dissemination of educational, engaging videos for young adolescents, their parents and educators, in multiple languages, including different accents of Spanish from the region, and other languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, which are indigenous languages of Mexico, as well as sign language.
To promote these efforts to expand access to comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) from a youth perspective, Fòs Feminista partnered with WestWind Foundation, and AMAZE International to launch a call for the WestWind Awards 2022-2023 which resulted in funding for organizations and youth groups in Latin America and the Caribbean who are using humor, animation, and innovation to develop videos and activate digital tools to reach young people.
The winners include Pasos y Huellas, a youth collective in Ecuador, working in collaboration with the organization CEPAM-G; #EsConESI; a youth-led group in Argentina supported by Casa FUSA and Impacto Digital; the Youth Program of Profamilia, Dominican Republic; and the organization Siempreviva from Mexico.
Drawing on AMAZE LAC’s tools and the reach of their platforms, the young awardees will use the funding to implement their ideas for opening conversation among young people through the use of digital platforms, the production of teen-friendly informational materials, and the creation of safe spaces and youth groups, while engaging in advocacy work on access to CSE.
“Indigenous and Afro-Mexican youth have been left out of education, health services and decision-making. This situation can change if adolescent girls and young women receive CSE. We have already seen the transformative power of education and empowerment interventions, so we want to bring that to more corners of our state.” Karen Paulina Castellanos, Youth Coordinator, Siempreviva.
Siempreviva is an organization that promotes sexual and reproductive rights in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, which is one of the states with the worst health indicators in the country. Through its project, Siempreviva will be working with young people in municipalities with a high concentration of indigenous and Afro-Mexican youth to translate AMAZE content in Spanish into local languages and contexts as part of its work.
“We’re paying a lot of attention to the language young people use, to make sure everything we do is owned by youth and they feel we speak the same language. We will be recording a podcast because we’re trying to reach our peers through new channels that we are all using.” Adela Vargas, Coordinator of Pasos y Huellas collective.
In Ecuador, Pasos y Hellas will be promoting debates among youth groups about key and sometimes taboo topics related to CSE and will encourage their participation in advocacy to ensure that national policies and strategies are in place to allow more youth to access CSE in public schools and not just those who can be part of specific projects.
The work that Fòs Feminista’s partner organizations are doing in Latin America and other parts of the world to expand access to CSE for millions of young people and their communities is enhanced by our partnership with AMAZE LAC, and the support of the WestWind Foundation. Together, we are centering the leadership and perspectives of youth who know better than anyone what their peers and the generations to come need.
