Global Youth Demand Action

Where were you 15 years ago? Maybe you were already working or looking for work, maybe you were in college or grade school, maybe you weren't even born yet.

But officials from 179 countries got together in Cairo, Egypt, in the fall of 1994 and promised to change the world in 20 years. The result of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was a ambitious plan that would, among other benefits, give universal access to services and information to improve the sexual and reproductive health of everyone by 2015.

Fast forward to today, with just over five years to go, and we have a lot of work to do.

Using technology that was just a glimmer in some developers' eyes 15 years ago, young people around the world are taking their sexual health and their future in their own hands. Earlier this month, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) launched the 15andCounting campaign on social networking platforms MXit, Facebook and Twitter - urging young people around the world to call their governments to task and demand action.

According to the campaign, "too many governments have failed to make good on their promises. This failure puts the lives and health of tens-of-millions of young people at risk." To put this in context, those born in 1994 form part of the largest group of young people the world has ever seen – some 1.5 billion. With these numbers, as I'm sure we all know, their health and wellbeing affects all of us.

Toward this end, the campaign offers a petition that will be presented to the United Nations to demand governments act now to "fulfill their promise to provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services for all young people."

More than 25,000 people from around the world have signed it so far, mostly young people. The campaign has a goal of "hundreds of thousands of signatures representing every country on the planet."

From their website: "We are asking all governments around the world to prioritise [sic] young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, including comprehensive sex education and information and youth friendly health services."

For more information, check out these links:

15andcounting
Join 15andcounting on Facebook
Follow 15andcounting on Twitter

YPulse at SXSW - getting the lo-down on teen webbing

Hello y'all,

Well, we're at the eve of Sex::Tech 2009 and all I can say is wow! Kickin' off this Sunday, March 22nd at the J.W. Marriott in San Francisco, California we here at ISIS are truly ready to rock the house! For those of you who want to show up prepared, I offer you this bit of blog to enhance and enrich your Sex::Tech 2009 experience.

Our friends at YPulse, namely Anastasia, headed out to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas last week to host a roundtable on "What Teens Want in a Website", and wrote about feedback from youth panelists. The youth talked about a bunch of topics, including the age old battle - MySpace versus Facebook, MS being for the "urban youth" and FB catering to "suburban youth". Turns out that neither of these social networking sites are all that "hot" right now, and that the youth have moved on to other, more relevant ways to social network via technology.

Which brought up the conversation about moving away from the computer screen and handlin' teen biz via texting, which has truly surpassed any of the social messaging networks. Teens get a phone, and wham-bam-thank you ma'am (ol' skool talk), it's On!! And these teens still text more than talk, remember talking??, which allows more privacy than MS/FB.

The panel also discussed brand sites, video, twitter, the whole mix of what y'all teens get yourselves involved in nowadays, when you have the spare time. It seems that all of these topics were of interest, but none of them really dominated the teen panel's time.

Overall, the article points out a few really good facts, based on the teen panel that is........teens are more interested in mobility than sitting in front of a computer screen. As far as being "techies" teens are workin' the text thing like mad, new tech is not something that these teens had a real passionate desire to explore.

Read all about it so that when you are sitting in the Sex::Tech workshops you'll be right on top of the dialogue and possibly add some of your own!

Enjoy the show and we all look forward to seeing you on Sunday.

Blessings!

Another Tech Mash-up for a Good Cause

What happens when you put the following groups in a (hypothetical) bag and shake it up real good?

The Partners:


MTV's Staying Alive Foundation is a multimedia HIV and AIDS prevention campaign and is itself a partnership between MTV Networks International, Family Health International, the Kaiser Family Foundation, UNAIDS, UNFPA.

Facebook Causes lets Facebook users show there support for causes and non-profits they care about by joining there pages and facilitating donations.

SpinVox is a platform that converts your voice into text. The cool thing about it is that you call into their line and speak your message and SpinVox can then post a text version of your spoken message to your blog, send a text to all your friends or update your social networking profile. So our knobby overworked fingers can take a break.

What comes out of that bag after a good shake is StandByWhatYouSay.com.
Here is a little snippet from the press release:

MTV's Staying Alive Foundation, SpinVox and Causes on Facebook yesterday announced the launch of their joint campaign, 'Stand By What You Say'. The groundbreaking initiative encourages young people to speak openly about sex, sexual health and HIV/AIDS, with a view to increasing awareness and breaking down the stigma and discrimination which so often accompanies the disease.

The campaign uses SpinVox to convert the voice messages that people leave in to text. Those that speak up are then asked to bolster their support by pledging money to the Staying Alive Foundation, MTV's HIV and AIDS charity which allocates grants to youth-led organisations who work to raise awareness on a local, grass-roots level. SpinVox itself will be 'standing by what it says' to match funds raised to the value of $50,000.

Callers are greeted by 2008 Staying Alive Foundation Ambassador Kelly Rowland, who prompts them to leave a message at 513-729-6417. The voice messages are converted to text and posted on a bespoke Staying Alive Blog http://www.standbywhatyousay.com by SpinVox. Topics such as 'sex secrets,' 'one night stands' and 'condoms' will act as conversation starters and encourage debate among global youth audience. Different themes and questions will be posed throughout the campaign to keep the contributions
coming.

I think that anything that helps people speak positively about sex and their sexual health is a good thing.
And this is a really interesting tech twist.  I don't know yet if speaking your message and then having it
converted to text is really better/different than typing.  But I will keep watching and seeing what kinds of
messages come rolling in. 

Puffing Our Chests Like Proud Parents!

The Fresh Focus Sex Ed Videos are rolling in and I, for one couldn't be happier. It's the perfect present for the holidays. If I could, I would put it on the mantel next to my new batch of scented holiday candles.

The submitted videos have all been witty and to the point. The video makers are frankly and openly asking for a sex education that is frank and open. In Sex Education: An Experimentation several experiments are run on high school students to learn how to make sex ed more interesting and relevant. The third experiment is the abstinence box, which is a cardboard box that covers the person's midsection. Unfortunately, the abstinence box makes it impossible to sit down, fit through door ways or pee. The conclusion that these 'sex education scientists' come to is that; people want to know facts and they need these facts so they can prepare for their lives.

There is still time to enter the contest! As we've mentioned before we've extended the deadline to January 7, 2008. Submit you videos at www.dogooder.tv/freshfocusvideocontest


The following is another Fresh Focus entry example. I'm posting it here because... well, frankly... stick figures fill me with the holiday spirit.