Join us as we launch the #YouthLead Social Issue Campaign. The YouthLead Social Issue campaigns are a “theme-based” short campaign led by YouthLead Ambassadors. The goal of the campaign is to provide a platform to share and amplify the YouthLead Ambassadors' voices about a social issue that they are passionate about and to share their knowledge, expertise, insights, and experience on the topic with other youths globally.
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About Webinar / Socal Media Chat Title:
How Youth Can Leverage Tech in Advocating for SRHR & Gender Equality Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
Youthlead Ambassador Kotu Asonele & Brian Mafuso will discuss and share their knowledge and experiences on how youth can continue to advocate for SHRH & Gender Equality even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our speakers will touch on the negative day to day realities of COVID-19 for young people, especially women and girls, and its effects on the access to SRHR services and GBV services. They will share examples and tips on how youth can play a part in addressing these issues leveraging technology for advocacy and impact. The webinar will also touch on effective coordination, collaboration, and communication of community response as we fight the negative effects of COVID-19 on SRHR and ways to amplify the youth voice in various settings. By making sure advocacy efforts are consistent, the Ambassadors hope to inspire a global movement for sexual and reproductive health services advocacy where youth can become SRH mentor/change agents and support the girl child.
Our first YouthLead Ambassador Social Issue campaign is on "Technology & SRHR" As the world continues to battle for control of the novel Coronavirus COVID-19, technology plays a major role in helping us to stay connected and empowering us to be able to continue our change-making work and impact our communities. This campaign focuses on "How Youth Can Leverage Tech to Advocate for SRHR & Gender Equality Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic"
The YouthLead Ambassadors will be leading a week-long campaign leveraging the YouthLead platform and its partner's network. Ambassadors will:
1. Lead knowledge sharing session by hosting a webinar and or leading a social media chat session on the campaign topic on Facebook & Twitter
2. Share resources, opportunities, events, funding opportunities etc related to the campaign topic on YouthLead.org.
3. Lead a Virtual-Table discussion on the YouthLead.org discussion group
#YouthPower #Youthlead #SRHRisOurRight
#YLSocialIssueCampaign
Download the webinar (Video/Audio)
YouthLead Social Issue campaign Report by Ambassadors Kotu Asonele and Brian Mafuso
Topic: How Youth Can Leverage Tech in Advocating for SRHR & Gender Equality amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
Introduction
The YouthLead Social Issue campaign is an avenue for YouthLead Ambassadors to lead a “theme-based” short campaign. The goal of the campaign is to provide a platform to share and amplify young people’s voices on various social issues that affect them in their daily lives and that they are also passionate about, and can share their knowledge, expertise, insights and experience about the various these topics to a global community of young change-makers.
About the webinar
The current global crisis the world is facing due to the outbreak of the coronavirus has come with a heavy price in all aspects of our social, economic and political lives. The Covid-19 pandemic has become an imminent threat in erasing past gains made in Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Gender Equality not only in Africa but all over the world as the pandemic, has exacerbated existing inequalities especially among vulnerable populations which include young people, adolescent girls and women, LGBTQI+ and people with disabilities who were already struggling to access comprehensive health care services and social protection systems. It is from this background, that YouthLead Ambassadors Kotu Asonele from South Africa and Brian Mafuso from Zimbabwe, who are both passionate about advocacy on various issues of Good Health for all young people especially adolescent girls and women, and Gender Equality, facilitated a social media campaign on “How Youth Can Leverage Tech to Advocate for SRHR and Gender Equality amid the COVID-19 pandemic’’
The essence of this campaign was to discuss, the essential role technology can play and be utilized in advancing Gender Equality and SRHR amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Webinar Session
In line with the objectives stated above, we started our social media campaign with a webinar on the 20th of April 2020 which was hosted via Zoom and podcasted on Facebook live to reach a wider audience of young people and other various stakeholders. The webinar had a panel of three people including the ambassadors mentioned and also Dr.Shakira Choonara from South Africa.
In the introduction, Ambassador Brian Mafuso gave a brief update of the negative impact that Covid-19 has had on SRHR and Gender Equality especially, already vulnerable groups including young people, adolescent girls, women, LGBTQI+ and people with disabilities. He briefed the meeting that the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted and taken hold of access to sexual and reproductive health care services, from routine services and testing for STIs to antenatal care, contraception, and abortion services which were among the services that suffered significantly. He also highlighted how it was now much more difficult to access SRHR services because of the precautionary measures of Covid-19 that would make it difficult to easily get admitted in any hospital as in some instances where pregnant women had to wait for long hours for admission because they had to undergo Covid-19 screening and other processes, these red tapes are very dangerous health risks that even threaten one’s life. One of the other things the ambassador pointed out was that recent data from UN Women and other institutions that deal with Gender Equality revealed with concern the rising cases of Gender-Based Violence, with most victims in most instances being adolescent girls and women. He lastly pointed out to the fact that the Covid-19 epidemic had put so much pressure on already struggling essential health services, procurement services and security services, which was a difficult challenge as it would mean issues of Gender-Based Violence such as psycho-social support and reporting cases to the police and prosecution of abusers.
In the second segment of the webinar Ambassador Asonele Kotu, started her presentation with a bold statement on how Covid-19 was a big lesson on the need to adjust our ways of thinking towards technology and leverage the medium through digital advocacy and education. In her submission, she gave a few examples of how technology can be utilized not only in the current situation but also in the future to create online platforms for Gender-Based Violence case reporting systems, virtual medical assistance, online mobile applications that provide women’s products and services. She recognized in her presentation that despite the drive for leveraging this online technology, access remains a challenge because of various reasons including high data costs, limited or lack of internet connectivity especially in rural areas and also limited access to smartphones in some cases, hence there was no blanket solution to all of the issues that were raised, however, she went on to provide critical solutions that needed to be done by African Governments was moving towards an area of investment in the development of tech infrastructure especially in rural communities and also leveraging on various platforms such as radio’s and SMS platforms to reach everyone with critical information, not only on Covid-19 but on SRHR and Gender Equality during these lockdowns.She concluded her presentation by giving take away messages to all young people and encouraged them to play an active role in the fight and response against Covid-19 by becoming a safe point of contact in the community, creating WhatsApp groups to check in on each other and disseminate information on GBV and combating fake news online on Covid-19.
In the last segment of the webinar, Dr. Shakira Choonara, who is currently serving as one of the Youth Advisory Council members within the African Union Commission.Dr. Choonara thanked the ambassadors for taking the initiative to discuss on this significant topic on leveraging on technology to advance SRHR and Gender Equality. She called on the need for accountability of African Heads of State, politicians and community leaders, young people are also supposed to play a critical role in holding their leaders accountable on delivering Good health for all and an environment were Gender Equality can be achieved even in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic, the issues that were being discussed and advanced should not be ignored.
The webinar ended with a question and answer segment from other young leaders.
Twitter Chat:
As part of the campaign the two Ambassadors took the campaign to twitter to discuss the critical topic on “How Youth Can Leverage Tech to Advocate for SRHR and Gender Equality amid the COVID-19 pandemic’’, which took place on the 22nd of April and was hosted on the YouthLead twitter account.This was one of the most exciting experience as we embarked on this discussion with other bold activists and advocates from all over the world, some of the key feedback that was given by participants is highlighted below
@zayithwa
Gender equality and good SRHR go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.
@RonaldMagomo
As the Youth , this an important moment for us to be in the frontline to provide the correct information that advances SRHR and also to engage offline for the benefit of those young people without access to the internet by engaging already existing community structures #Youthlead
For more on this discussion you can follow them on the YouthLead twitter account, https://twitter.com/youthleadglobal/status/1252959746048606209
Resources linked to campaign:
- Strategic preparedness and response plan for the novel coronavirus (WHO)
- Gender and the coronavirus outbreak (Council on Foreign Relations)
- COVID-19: The Gendered Impacts of the Outbreak (The Lancet)
- Playing the Long Game: How a Gender Lens Can Mitigate Harm Caused by Pandemics (Center for Global Development)
- Why gender matters in the impact and recovery from COVID-19 (The Interpreter)
- ‘Gender blind’ coronavirus policies could hinder disease fight (Sci Dev Net)
- Why Women May Face a Greater Risk of Catching Coronavirus (The New York Times)
- COVID-19 is not gender-neutral (Broad Agenda)
- The coronavirus fallout may be worse for women than men. Here’s why. (World Economic Forum)
- Coronavirus: Five ways virus upheaval is hitting women in Asia (BBC News)
- Why the Coronavirus Outbreak Could Hit Women Hardest (TIME)
- The Covid-19 puzzles that scientists are still trying to answer (The Guardian)
- Needs of female medical workers overlooked in coronavirus fight, advocates say (Inkstone)
- Call for Global Evidence on Gender and COVID-19 (Men’s Health Forum)
- Paying attention to women’s needs and leadership will strengthen COVID-19 response (UN Women)
- How Will COVID-19 Affect Women and Girls in Low- and Middle-Income Countries? (Center for Global Development)
- The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism (The Atlantic)
- Ideas for a Pro-Poor and Pro-Women Approach to COVID-19 (Oxfam)
- Women’s domestic burden just got heavier with the coronavirus (The Guardian)
- COVID-19 demands that we pay attention to who does the care work – and how we support them(Promundo)
- Column: Ease heavy burden of women affected by COVID-19 pandemic (Star Advertiser)
- From nannies to helpers, coronavirus spotlights Asia women’s job insecurity (Thomas Reuters Foundation)
- Delivered by Women, Led by Men: A Gender and Equity Analysis of the Global Health and Social Workforce (World Health Organization)
- Operation 50/50 Nomination: Women Experts Working in Global Health Security (Women in Global Health)
- Why We Need to Talk More About the Potential for COVID-19 to Increase the Risk of Violence Against Women and Girls (Social Development Direct)
- As Cities Around the World Go on Lockdown, Victims of Domestic Violence Look for a Way Out (Time)
- ‘Cabin fever’: Australia must prepare for the social and psychological impacts of a coronavirus lockdown(The Standard)
- Home is Not A Safe Place for Everyone (Huffington Post)
- COVID-19’s Gender Implications Examined in Policy Brief from CARE (CARE)
- The COVID-19 Outbreak and Gender: Key Advocacy Points from Asia and the Pacific (UN Women)
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