Implementing digital toolkit for normalizing conversations on comprehensive sexuality education among young adults in India.

Summary

Talking about sex is a taboo in India, come and find out how Love Matters India is engaging with young adults on this very taboo topic with the help of a digital toolkit. Love Matters India is normalizing conversations on comprehensive sexuality education for young adults with the aid of digital toolkit. The digital toolkit titled Baat karne se baat banti hai' contains videos, radio episodes and a corresponding booklet. We co-created the toolkit with the peer educators and young people in Bihar, India. Please come and join our informative multimedia session wherein we will present how the young people in India are talking about key comprehensive sexuality education topics like menstruation, early marriage effects, dealing with rejection and consent. Be cognizant of the toolkit helping young adults talk about taboo issues in a fun and engaging manner.

Background/Objectives

Young people in India have many unmet needs regarding comprehensive sexuality education. Reliable sources of information are rare and it is considered a taboo to talk about it, and is guided by strict and repressive norms. Young people tend to act on myths, rumors and hear-say from peers or porn. To normalize these conversations in rural areas, especially among women, we created a digital toolkit titled Baat karne se hi baat banti hai' and trained peer educators on the same. It was rolled out in the field via peer educators who conducted sessions amongst their individual group of peers.

Results/Lessons Learned

A qualitative assessment conducted to evaluate change in knowledge of peer educators on key comprehensive sexuality education issues covered under the toolkit via baseline and endline survey. There was major difference found in peer educator's knowledge on the topics of consent, love, attraction & friendship, rejection and safe-sex. Topics like child marriage, female and male anatomy, and menstruation saw no major difference. In endline, 34% peer educators linked health risks associated with early marriage to both women and child as compared to 27% in baseline. In endline, only 1% peer educators viewed masturbation as a disease as compared 22 percent in the baseline. Around 27% peer educators thought it was not okay for girls to masturbate in baseline, and in endline the number decreased to 11%. Around 90% peer educators were able to define the term consent' in endline as compared to only 50% in baseline.

Discussion/Implications For The Field

The digital toolkit aided peer educators to talk about different taboo issues and one of them was masturbation. Topics like love, attraction & friendship, consent, and rejection were challenging for young adults while discussing with their friends. Sexual harassment topic needs in-depth exploring as many young peopled claimed stalking, unwanted touch, staring and passing lewd comments does not mean sexual harassment. Most females perceived that it was okay to get violent with someone who rejects your affection and this needs to be further addressed that why females accept the violence and the social norms, which make them, accept violence.

Abstract submitted by:

Jahnavi Sharma - Development Consortium (DC)