Stop Hiv/Aids and talk about sexual health, 2007 - 2010
October 2007 saw the start of a three-year project of Youth Incentives 'Stop the spread of HIV through institutional and capacity building of Women’s Health in St. Petersburg through an open discussion of sexual reproductive health and rights for young people'. The project is financed by the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The project aims at improving the sexual health of young people in St. Petersburg, in order to decrease STI’s, unwanted pregnancies and hiv/Aids among them. Young people’s sexual rights and participation are central in this, both in public debates and in education and the media.
Expertise is being developed in order to openly discuss sex education of young people by means of training courses to medical practitioners, teachers, reporters, parents and young people themselves. Using a web forum for young people, we are developing publications, such as brochures and magazines.
The project started half December 2007. At the same time an Activity Plan was written for 2008. Ten teachers from St Petersburg attended a training course in the Netherlands from 9 to 16 March 2008. The training encompassed:
-
the Rights based approach, Acceptance of young people’s sexuality and Participation of young people;
-
HIV-prevention;
-
the generation gap between young people and adults when it comes to discussing sexuality.
Visit to Saint Petersburg, February 2006
End of February 2006 one of the senior consultants of Youth Incentives had a meeting in Saint Petersburg with Women’s health in Saint Petersburg (WHinSPB) to discuss further collaboration and partnership. The relations between Rutgers Nisso Groep / Youth Incentives and WHinSPB exist since September 2005 when they met at a conference in Saint Petersburg (see below).
The brochures and documents on sexuality education of Youth Incentives and the RAP rule raised awareness within Women’s health in St Petersburg, the facilitator of the Conference. Both organisations Women’s health in St Petersburg and Youth Incentives felt a need to develop their partnership and to collaborate on improving the institutional capacity of their NGO’s and other NGO’s with a focus on access to sexuality education and services for young people by adopting the Dutch Approach (RAP rule ).
A Matra project proposal will be developed on the social transformation process which is closely connected with raising awareness of civil society on the issues of RAP of young people in HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health.
Second Russian-Dutch Conference on Public Health and Female Health, September 20, 2005
The Dutch Ministry of Health, Social Welfare and Sports invited the Rutgers Nisso Groep, a non-governmental organisation, to take part in this one-day conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Rutgers Nisso Groep, Dutch Expert Centre on Sexuality, and its international programme Youth Incentives are concerned about the theme Public Health and Female Health, which was the title of this conference. There were about 150 participants: policymakers, teachers, medical and educational background, women organisations, students, journalists, advocacy people and social workers. Twentyseven short presentations were mainly held on community efforts towards women, their role in the family, society and health. Youth Incentives discussed with Women’s Health (a non-governemental organisation) the possibilities to collaborate to support a proposal on sexuality education in the future.
