how media can help promoting the cause of providing sexuality education to youth ?

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Permalink Reply by Iswandy Ahmad on July 24, 2009 at 7:46pm

Hi Sadaf =)

From my humble opinion, media can be like a knife (useful when use correctly & harmful when use incorrectly).

In today's media, the idea of "SEX" is being sensationised & hyped-up and mostly for entertainment purposes.Take for example: James Bond movie, sees a girl whom never met, bring her out, bring to hotel, straight to sex (without using condom).

Nowadays, we tend to play the "blame game" (blame media, parents, teachers etc). From my point of view, rather than we blaming, why not we look how we can collaborate or utilise with media? =)

For example. newspaper can have special edition for sexuality education, chatroom can invite a health professional to answer youth questions, podcasts can educate youngsters on sexually related matters, make media-related competition (e.g. photo, video, blogs etc) on the matter (& the list goes on).

Easier said than done but yes, where there's a will, there's a way = )

-Iswandy Ahmad
Commonwealth Youth Ambassador for Positive Living,
Brunei Darussalam AIDS Council

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Permalink Reply by sadaf nasim on July 25, 2009 at 11:44am

yes , i am sure about it ...
see we have begun with this discussion.
the major hurdles that i see is the extremely low literacy rate , most of the times virtual discussion forums, newspaper editions do not help much as people do not know how to read and write. audio visual media as in television and radio are far more effective and impactful. so
media collaboartion in sexuality education along with other factors is very important.
but media as you have mention is a a knife it harms badly if not misused, the major issues which is making sexuality and sex education difficult in underdeveloped countries ( specially the ones with muslim population ) is that the people who have been to school throughout their lives and have very little exposer otherwise . they relate the concept of sex or sexuality education with kind of movies you mentioned. and they believe that it's very unethical to talk about.
if we want to achieve desired goals we have got to strive for better literacy rate as well

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Permalink Reply by Iswandy Ahmad on July 26, 2009 at 7:41am

In any cause that we do, in my point of view, the underlying principle is education & empowerment first. Without educating the target group i.e young people, regardless how good the article or poster is but if the message is unsuccessfully conveyed, then we are fighting an uphill battle i.e. not impossible but very hard.

Hence, mainstreaming sex education (to another point, in some countries, the term 'sex education's is taboo but this one can be addressed with similar names e.g. family life education, hehe) is vital now with collaboration with other agencies on a multi-sectoral approach. E.g. an NGO come up with HIV awareness with the Ministry of Education have a family life education programme and Ministry of Health providing the technical knowledge, which includes media to convey the message even further (see, 4 sectors involved there? =))

I agree with audio & visual is more effective in reaching out, especially to young people (e.g. that is why Youtube is more popular than online newspaper). & we can add up to it with INVOLVING this young people e.g. media competition, dances, street-shows etc. Why? Because I remember Confucious said, "I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand" =)

An example, in one of our programme here, we explan to the young people what is red ribbon. Yet, we involve them more by making their own red ribbon & make a red ribbon human chain. Now, the red ribbon human chain has been done few times already in a public place. Oh. you can imagine the passersby watching us wearing all red & sitting down on the floor making the ribbon! ; )

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