I have sex

A great video from young people in the US on the attack on funding for Planned Parenthood. ASK are hoping to do something in a similar vein over the next few months so keep checking in with us.

 

 

In the meantime, our Keep Your Promise video is going to be displayed on that giant screen over the entrance to St Stephens Green Shopping Centre! Keep a look out and let us know if you see it!

 

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

ASK

Advocacy. Sexuality. Knowledge.

 

Just in case you were wondering 🙂

 

ASK Update

So I realise that we’re pretty bad at the old blogging thing seeing as we haven’t uploaded anything since Oct! Sorry!! We are updating the facebook page a little more regularly (facebook.com/askyouthcampaign).

Anyways we’ve finished a rather hectic few months with the MDG 5b ‘Keep Your Promise’ Campaign.What campaign is that.. I hear you say…. well here’s what we did!

We got funding from IPPF for a project to raise awareness about MDG5b! Yay, go us!

Then we created a factsheet and declaration which are both available here to download: http://www.ifpa.ie/eng/Youth/ASK/Keep-Your-Promise

After that we invited youth leaders from all different political parties and youth groups to dinner where we discussed the importance of highlighting that MDG5b is the most off track of all MDGs and the one which will impact the most on youth.

Keep Your Promise Dinner with Youth Leaders

Then we had different groups sign the declaration, not as many as we would have liked but even those who didn’t, we were able to have an open, frank discussion with them about sexual and reproductive health and rights.We wrote to a number of politicians as well around the time of the UN MDG Summit way back in Sept and received very positive responses! If I had the right paper work in front of me, I’d be able to give a list, but I’ll have to come back and edit the post to include them!

Finally, we decided to make a short video to highlight the issue and we’ve been promoting that for the past few weeks. We’re at 993 views which is amazing as our target was 1000! So please share the love and send around this blog post or a link to the video to your friends.

If you don’t know why 500,000 women die every year, you should. And this video will tell you why.

Finally, to find out more on MDG5b, check out this website: http://www.mdg5b.org/

 

Vienna AIDS Conference 2010

Linda and Grace went over to Vienna in July to take part in an advocacy training run by Restless Development on the issue of HIV/Aids. They then ran a session on advocacy at the IFPA Dance4life World Aids Day Celebration which took place at the end of Nov. There were about 200 young people at the celebration learning about what it meant to be an advocate!

YSAFE Annual Meeting

Linda travelled to Brussels on the 12th and 13th Feb 2011 to take part in the YSAFE annual meeting and will be blogging about it in a bit!

 

Blogged by Linda

What is the ASK Campaign?

ASK was established in 2009 by a group of young volunteers committed to improving young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. We also want to empowering young people to voice their opposition to Ireland’s restrictive sexual health laws and policies. ASK aims to create a space where progressive young people can share skills and knowledge, and support each other to initiate programmes, campaigns and trainings for other young people focusing on a range of sexual health issues.

ASK was established in 2009 by a group of young volunteers committed to improving young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. We also want to empowering young people to voice their opposition to Ireland’s restrictive sexual health laws and policies. ASK aims to create a space where progressive young people can share skills and knowledge, and support each other to initiate programmes, campaigns and trainings for other young people focusing on a range of sexual health issues.

Mission:

We believe that all people have the right to pursue a fulfilling and enjoyable sex life. We are committed to putting forward a positive, informed approach to sex and sexuality. As a group, we welcome all sexualities, gender identities, and levels of ability. We want to increase the availability of unbiased, accessible information on Sexual Health and Rights.

Connect with us:

http://www.ifpa.ie/eng/Youth/ASK
http://www.twitter.com/ASKcampaign

Find us on facebook by searching for ‘ASK Campaign’

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