Volume 14, No. 3, April 2002
This Transitions is also available in [PDF] format.
Table of Contents
This Transitions focuses on community participation, a movement in the public health field that respects the rights and responsibility of community members—including youth—to diagnose the causes of a community problem and to actively engage in designing, implementing, and evaluating strategies to address the problem. Community participation can be a vital strategy that helps shift the ways in which communities deal with adolescents and their sexual health as community adults partner with young people and with program planners to create appropriate solutions to community problems.
Resources on Community Participation
Norman J. Building Effective Youth-Adult Partnerships. Transitions 2001; volume 14, number 1. [HTML]
World Bank. The World Bank Participation Sourcebook. Washington, DC: The Bank, 1996. [www.worldbank.org/wbi/sourcebook/sbpdf.htm]
Inter-American Development Bank. Resource Book on Participation: Washington, DC: The Bank, [1996?] [www.iadb.org/exr/english/policies/participate/index.htm]
United Nations Development Programme. Empowering People: A Guide to Participation. New York, NY: The Programme, 1998.
Howard-Grabman L et al. The WARMI Project: A Participatory Approach to Improve Maternal and Neonatal Health: An Implementor's Manual. Arlington, VA: John Snow, MotherCare, 1994.
Get Involved! Fight for Your Rights: Protect Yourself
Support Honest, Realistic Sex Education!
In April, Advocates for Youth announced its partnership with the media giant MTV in a yearlong campaign, Fight for Your Rights: Protect Yourself, the first-ever mass mobilization of young people in the United States to fight for their right to responsible, medically accurate sexual health information.
Through this campaign, youth will finally have a way to make their voices heard.
Click here to learn more, to become an activist, to fight for your rights or phone Advocates for Youth's Youth Empowerment Initiatives at 202.419.3420.
Films by and for Teens
Scenarios USA is a program to get teens thinking about their choices and decisions around important issues that affect their lives, such as HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancy and violence. Teens, ages 12 to 22, address these issues by writing stories for the Scenarios contest, What's the Real Deal.
Winners get to make their stories into short films in their hometown, working with a professional filmmaker and crew. The finished products are high-quality short films that educators can use to spark discussion on important issues. The films have been shown on MTV, PBS and NBC affiliates, Oxygen, at film festivals and on the Internet as well as on ABC's World News Tonight and NPR's On the Media.
Teenagers in New York City and Laredo, Texas, wrote the two most recent films released by Scenarios USA. The New York film, From an Objective Point of View, tells the story of two best friends who make a pact not to have sex without consulting the other and whose pact verges on being broken. The result is an honest look at teenage desire. Written by 16-year-old Janet Aponte, the film was directed by Jim McKay (Our Song) and Hannah Weyer (La Boda) and shot in Brooklyn.
The Laredo Story is adapted from an essay written by a 14-year-old girl who feels pressure regarding "drugs, alcohol, and doing what it takes to fit in." She decides to maintain her individuality and to remain abstinent. The film was written by Samantha Hernandez, directed by Griffin Dunne (Practical Magic and Lisa Picard Is Famous) and shot in the Texas-Mexico border town of Laredo.
To order, contact Scenarios USA, 110 West 18th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10011 or phone 646.230.7677.
Transitions (ISSN 1097-1254) © 2002, is a quarterly publication of Advocates for Youth—Helping young people make safe and responsible decisions about sex. For permission to reprint, contact Transitions' editor at 202.419.3420.
Editor: Sue Alford
This publication is part of the Transitions series.