Age:25
Country:Nepal
When I reflect back, it’s
already been more than 6 years, I am working as youth volunteer in Family
Planning Association. I still remember the day, actually my first day in youth center
of the organisation in Bhaktapur. The room was full of young girls and boys and
in the middle of the room there was a young girl sharing her problem. She was an
unmarried pregnant girl who was asking other young people in around her. I was
given a card with doctor written on it and there were few more people arounf
with card named sister, teacher, mother and friend. The young girl who was
sharing her story asked me for suggestion after sharing her problem of unwanted
pregnancy. I told her if she does not want to keep the pregnancy then you may
wish to go for safe abortion which is right of a woman. With my answer, everyone
else in the room clapped. Actually it was an exercise called ‘figure head
exercise’.
After this there was no
looking back. I was all ready to speak about my body, choice and access to
sexual and reproductive health. Slowly I became more aware about the youth
center and its work and with my involvement, I started getting opportunities to
take part in many training and workshops. It was 2007 when I represent youth of
Nepal in an international youth conference to present on Sex work, HIV and
youth I got an international exposure. Similarly I got involved in different
projects including advocating for Comprehensive sexuality education in Nepal in
which my responsibility was also to conduct radio program, a popular radio
program which is about young people SRHR. My team used to get lot of queries
from young people in the program. I remember one of the questions we asked in
radio program "From where the young
people get SRHR information?" One of the listeners of our program SMS
us "50% from books, 20% from
internet, 10% from friends, 3% from cousins, 1% from teachers and 0.01 from
parents" This showed that
parents are uncomfortable to talk with their children about SRHR and young
people are also not able to discuss their RH problems with their family
members. This was a great lesson learnt and then I and my youth center team
organized parent meeting where we noticed that parents also want any other but
authentic place where their children could get information and services
regarding SRHR.
Recently now I am working
as youth consultant in Ipas Nepal and supervisor of World Bank project
"Reproductive health classes for young women factory workers". Being
a young woman and belonging to conservative society where talking about sex and
sexuality is a taboo, I have seen young people struggling because they face RH
problem in their daily life. This has been inspiration for me to work in the
field of young people's SRHR. Young people are not a homogenous group. The
young women working in the factories are marginalized group and vulnerable to
high risk behaviors. Therefore Ipas Nepal with its youth led partner
organizations is working to raise awareness about RH among young women factory
workers by conducting series of RH classes (SRH rights, sex & gender,
relationship, anatomy, puberty & menstruation, pregnancy, contraception and
safe abortion)
One of the young women in
factory shared, " oh god! I am a
mother of two sons and till today I did not know about female genital organs. I
did not know that vagina is where sexual intercourse takes place and urethra is
for only urination." We also found that there is high sexual abuse
among young women factory workers and unsafe sex behaviors. Most of the young
women are unaware about legalization of safe abortion in Nepal. It has been 10
years after legalization of abortion in Nepal but still young women are unaware
of the fact that it is young women's sexual and reproductive rights.
The best lesson learnt in
my life experience is that, only peers can understand another young people’s SRH
problem. Therefore active involvement and participation of young people must be
there while planning policies and programs for youth.
0 comments:
Post a Comment