Youth Like Me: Young People in Ghana Talk About Sexuality, Relationships, and Parenthood

The Center for Digital Storytelling (www.storycenter.org) surfaces authentic voices around the world through group process and participatory media creation. Our Silence Speaks program (www.silencespeaks.org) adapts the Center’s core methods to work internationally on issues of gender equality, health, and human rights.

In this session, we will screen a selection of digital stories created through our 2014 partnership with Marie Stopes International (MSI). We collaborated with MSI’s Ghana country office to bring young people from around Ghana together in Accra, for a four-day workshop.  They shared touching personal stories about their experiences with intimate relationships, violence, STIs, and pregnancy/motherhood. As we worked with the youth to craft these narratives into short videos, we supported them in learning photography skills, developing leadership capacities, and attaining new and valuable information about sexual and reproductive health and rights.

As part of the proposed session, we will talk about what makes digital storytelling unique, as a participatory media method that stresses youth development and skill building. We will also share the range of ways that our partners at MSI are using the Ghana stories as powerful tools for health education with youth, through the use of a comprehensive Story Discussion Guide, and as prompts for discussions with health institutions and health policy leaders, about the need for youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services and policies.