My condom or yours, darling?

This was a phrase spoken by Elizabeth Pisani during her TED Talk entitled: Sex, drugs and HIV – let’s get rational

 

 

A brilliant talk which demonstrates that HIV prevention is not just about providing male condoms. This was shown at the recent YSAFE Annual Meeting which I attended on behalf of ASK on the 12th and 13th of February 2011. It was by far my favourite session. Well done to Felix for showing it as part of his session.

Another session I really liked was one on ‘Talking about HIV’ where we looked at different ads  around HIV/AIDs prevention and the different messages they send out.

Both of these sessions took place on the second day and I think one of the reasons I enjoyed them more was because they examined the more in depth and often conflicting issues around HIV/AIDS prevention. The first day, much of which was facilitated by the lovely and very knowledgeable Jon Hopkins of IPPF, focused more on facts and knowledge and examining our own opinions. This was important as we had about 30 young people in the room from varying backgrounds. But because I had been over at the Vienna AIDS Conference in July, some of the stuff was a bit repetitive.

Overall, a very enjoyable weekend with some great people. Got some great literature from the RFSU in Sweden entitled ‘Pussypedia’ and ‘Dicktionary’…. I’ll let your imagination run wild on what they contained! Check out some photos on the facebook page! 🙂

And for the formal stuff: Luize Ratniece and Iurii Arian were elected as the youth reps for the next 3 years! Both were very impressive candidates and I think they will do a great job representing young people across Europe.

Thanks to Ada and all the steering committe for organising a great weekend! Pity that next year I’ll be too old go!

 

For more information on YSAFE, go to their website: http://www.ysafe.net/ or find them on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/YSAFE/159338625070?v=info#!/pages/YSAFE/159338625070?v=wall