Youth Leaders Speak: Digital Stories About Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Challenges and Successes

The selection of short videos featured on the DVD, Youth Leaders Speak: Digital Stories of Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Challenges and Successes, address the challenges faced by committed advocates from Indigenous Mayan, Garifuna, and Mestizo communities in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize in enhancing the reproductive health of young people and supporting their quest for the information and services they need to cultivate healthy sexuality and make responsible decisions about pregnancy and parenting. The videos were created in a three and one-half day digital storytelling workshop, in which alumni from the GOJoven Fellowship program shared and recorded short, personal narratives; gathered images and video clips with which to illustrate their stories; and learned via hands-on computer tutorials how to combine these materials into digital videos. The videos explore issues such as the lack of sexuality education in schools and homes due to cultural taboos related to adolescent sexual expression; the ways in which gender inequality, high school drop out rates, and low literacy contribute to early pregnancy; the silence surrounding gender based violence, and the ways abuse reduces young women's sense of ownership of their sexuality; the role that stigma towards LGBT youth plays in youth efforts to “prove” heterosexuality; the lack of youth-friendly reproductive health services and overall health infrastructure, particularly in rural areas in Latin America; and the challenges posed by parental consent laws related to adolescent contraception youth and the criminalization of abortion. As a collection, the videos shed light on typically silenced topics and show the courage and motivation of the adolescent reproductive health leaders who created them.