The Drum Beat 466 - Conversations with Youth
Though the title of this Drum Beat is "Conversations with Youth", the ways in which children and youth converse with each other and with adults, as well as receive and convey information, can include many modes of communication. This issue highlights a number of these modes, including: creating person-to-person opportunities for conversation; utilising information and communication technology (ICT) and print publications to reach children and youth; and developing ICT opportunities to open conversations among youth locally, internationally, and across rural/urban divides.
- focus on adults reaching youth about issues related to GROWING UP and becoming productive, engaged citizens.
- a focus on adults reaching youth about issues related to FAMILY PLANNING AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH.
- a POLL on strategies for young children affected by HIV/AIDS.
- a CLASSIFIEDS opportunity - to post your open vacancies, training and event opportunities, RFPs, consultant details, and books, videos and journals for sale.
- a focus on YOUTH SPEAKING on topics that concern them and in conversation with other youth.
- POLL RESULTS from our recently closed poll on young children and technologies.
ADULTS REACHING YOUTH
Conversations About Growing Up
1. Talk With Your Kids About Tough Issues
by Lynne S. Dumas
This parent guide offers practical, concrete tips and techniques for talking easily and openly with children ages 8 to 12 about issues such as sex, HIV/AIDS, violence, and drugs and alcohol. It is based on the premise that even young children learn about sensitive topics from television, movies, magazines, and friends. The idea is that, by talking with kids early and often, parents can offer information that is both accurate and in sync with their own principles and values. The key is, according to this guide, the following: "It's up to parents to create an atmosphere where children feel free to ask any question on any subject."
by David Palmer
The Yiriman Project, organised by a group of senior Aboriginal people in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, holds bush trips to bring together young people, elders, and other community members in order to find ways for young people to separate themselves from "negative influences, and reconnect with their culture in remote and culturally significant places." This practice is informed by Participatory Learning Analysis (PLA) or Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) which find their motivations for participation in "the belief that "top-down" development or government has shortcomings..." Through participation, young people feel a sense of equality, unencumbered expression, a right to shape one's future, exchange of ideas and information sharing, free access to public space, universal human rights, and "subsidiarity" or the exercise of power from below.
3. Time to Talk - United States
This is a multimedia campaign encouraging and empowering United States (US) parents and caregivers to have frequent talks with their kids about the health risks of drug and alcohol use. Time to Talk provides parents with practical tips, tools, and information, such as "How to Tell If Your Teen is Drinking or Using Drugs", "Tips for Getting the Conversation Started", "Answering the Question: 'Did You Do Drugs?'", and "How to Help Your Kid Turn Down Drugs". In addition, parents may access an online parent forum that enables them to share experiences and connect with other parents facing similar situations. A national toll-free call centre is designed to serve as another source for those in need.
Contact: Candice Besson candice_besson@drugfree.org
4. Reaching Out to Students When They Talk and Text
by Jennifer Medina
This November 2007 article profiles a New York (NY) City (New York, United States) government administration effort to use mobile telephones to motivate low-achieving students to succeed in school. The effort will use text messages, drawn up by an advertising agency and sent over the phones, that promote achievement. The city plans to enlist adult mentors who will call students periodically to encourage them to study or to congratulate them for doing well on a test. In addition, celebrity participation in text messaging and calling is being sought. According to the NY City schools chancellor, it is a first attempt to bring about change in the culture and behaviour of low-performing students, after years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching. "The pilot program will include mentoring and incentives for high performance, like free concerts and sporting events and free minutes and ring tones for their phones. Every student in each of the schools will be given a cellphone."
Conversations About Family Planning and Reproductive Health
5. Talking About Sex: Using Youth Language in Sexuality Education
by Chi-Chi Undie, Joanna Crichton, and Eliya Zulu
This article explains that language shapes the way people think about life and, therefore, influences actions. It proposes that analysing the metaphors young people use while talking about sex can provide valuable insights into the ways in which youth understand sex, sexual behaviour, and sexual relationships. These insights may have untapped potential for enhancing the effectiveness of sexuality education interventions. This article reviews a study conducted by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in 2006 that sought to gain insights into the ways young people in Malawi think about sex and sexual relationships by analysing the language - specifically, the metaphors - they use. The authors suggest that an important way of tailoring interventions to the sociocultural context involves incorporating young people's own language into curricula and teaching approaches.
This booklet is designed to help parents and caregivers in South Africa address HIV/AIDS issues with children in a positive and interactive manner. Takalani Sesame, the South African version of Sesame Street, produced this booklet, which is broken down into two sections. The first part shares general strategies for communicating effectively with children, establishing trust, and building rapport. The second section offers specific information about HIV/AIDS as well as advice on how to present this information in an age-appropriate manner. In this section, the booklet suggests ways in which children can learn to express feelings and ideas about their body, about people living with HIV, about coping with a parent's illness, and about coping with death in general.
7. Words Can Work: When Talking With Kids About Sexual Health
by Jeanne Blake
In this book, young people and parents discuss puberty, values, relationships, birth control, and postponing sex. Experts, including former United States (US) Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., offer facts, strategies, and the words to help young people and families talk about these topics.
Please VOTE in our NEW Early Child Development POLL!
Which of these strategies should be prioritised in supporting young children affected by HIV/AIDS? [you may choose more than one]
Strategies:
- Create employment opportunities for surviving family members.
- Create participatory opportunities for children in developing policies on children affected by HIV/AIDS.
- Create family training and support on rights-related child issues.
- Create more publicly funded housing, such as orphanages and foster families (with training made available).
- Support village-centred care arrangements with long-term financial commitments.
VOTE AND COMMENT click here
Please post your development-related jobs, consultants, requests for proposals (RFPs), events, training opportunities, and books, journals, or videos for sale. Click here for more information or contact jsavidge@comminit.com
The next issue of the Development Classifieds E-magazine will be published November 5th 2008.
Please submit openings and opportunities as soon as possible to ensure inclusion.
by Monideepa Sahu
In order to expand children's participation within local government in India, the Karnataka state government's panchayati raj ministry made it mandatory for all panchayats [villages] to provide children with a platform to put their concerns forward directly to elected representatives at special children's "gram sabhas" [children's assemblies]. Issues that have been brought to the fore by children include, for example, alcoholism and the violence and poverty that the children associated with it, lack of sanitation as a result of stray cattle, and flooding, which blocked the path to school. Children developed solutions (e.g., a wall around the school to keep out stray cattle and a footbridge over the flooded area) which included each community as a whole. They then conducted surveys, collected data, and documented discussions between groups of children, women, and marginalised groups in support of the solutions they developed.
9. To Change the Dance You Must Change the Music
by Ailish Byrne and Jim Hunt
This article describes communication for social change (CFSC) in youth programmes in Ethiopia. These youth dialogue programmes provide adolescents with forums to discuss HIV/AIDS and encourage them to take an active role in preventing the spread of the virus. The programme promotes "Community Conversations" which aim to include more voices and generate as much community dialogue, youth decision-making, and tangible action as possible. According to the article's discussion of participatory methods, when young people have the opportunity to discuss HIV/AIDS, they consider issues within their own socio-cultural contexts, identify and prioritise their problems, define their capacity and strengths, and mobilise resources for collective gain.
Launched in 2003, Chat the Planet is a global television and web initiative that links young people from different countries and cultures using two-way video satellite technology. The purpose is to break down barriers, foster tolerance, and promote active participation in youth-related local and international events. Pre-recorded video inserts introduce topics such as activism and materialism, political correctness, immigration and nationalism, youth culture, family values, and war, and serve to instigate the conversation. The participants share their perspectives on these issues, which opens up the dialogue to topics ranging from music and pop culture to world issues and ethics.
Contact: Laurie Meadoff Laurie.meadoff@nextnextent.com
11. Just Say Yes - United States
Just Say Yes is a grassroots, peer-based, activist effort to give teens the information they need to take care of themselves and affirm their decisions about sex, sexuality, and reproductive control. By hand-distributing a printed booklet and providing an interactive website, the project also aims to facilitate dialogue and stimulate debate, both in and out of United States' public schools, on condom/dental dam availability and sex education. Just Say Yes is structured around communicating the following message to youth, no matter their sexual preferences or decisions: "you have the right to make your own choices, and to have people respect them." Youth participation in the process of developing "Just Say Yes" was central.
Contact: Coalition for Positive Sexuality (CPS)
12. Rural Voices of Youth - Nigeria
The Rural Voices of Youth project reaches out to young Nigerians in rural areas using face-to-face communication and ICTs to give them "a voice" on various development issues and challenges.
Contact: Oyebisi Babatunde Oluseyi oyebisius@yahoo.com
For archived issues of The Drum Beat related to Conversations with Youth, please see:
The Drum Beat 435 - Impact: Straight Talk in Uganda March 24 2008
The Drum Beat 394 - Youthful Participation May 14 2007
The Drum Beat 199 - Electing Our Leaders June 2 2003
RESULTS from our recently closed Early Child Development Poll:
Introducing very young children to technologies such as computers is...
42%: Promising, with the caveat that parents must closely supervise young children's use of the internet.
30%: Advisable: technology can be a powerful learning tool, and early use may facilitate development of skills for use later in life.
28%: Unwise: children should be encouraged to learn from, and interact with, peers rather than adopt sedentary modes of learning.
For Comments related to this poll, click here
This issue was written by Julie Levy.
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
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