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Forum Summary


Greetings,

This is the final message for our Youth Forum: Pregnancy Prevention in a Time of AIDS. Taking part in the forum over the last month has been an enriching experience for me personally and I hope for each of you. Participation exceeded our expectations — 654 participants from 86 countries around the world received the digests. Of those, 87 people from 32 countries (28 of them developing countries) made a total of 129 postings through the entire forum.

Thanks to all of you who submitted postings, to those who forwarded information about the forum to your friends and colleagues, and to those who signed on and read the digests. Your questions and comments enlivened the forum and allowed the dialogue to cut across cultures. 

I would like to say a special word of thanks to those who made the forum possible:

  • Coordinators – Bill Finger of YouthNet/Family Health International (FHI) and Peggy D'Adamo of the INFO Project/Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP)
  • Technical Assistance – Anjali Sanghvi, INFO Project (JHU/CCP)
  • Editorial Assistance – Tara Kachgal, YouthNet consultant
  • Evaluation Assistance – Saori Ohkubo, INFO Project (JHU/CCP)
  • WHO/IBP Liaison – Lou Compernolle

I would also like to thank our guest panelists: Ward Cates of FHI, Lynn Collins of UNFPA, and Jim Shelton of USAID. Finally, I would like to thank the following invited contributors to week 4 of the forum: Omeire Edward, Edward (Ted) Green, Atanas Kirjakovski, Ann McCauley, Jennifer Nadeau, Julie Pulerwitz, Duanne Punpiputt, Michaelle Soliman, and Julie Wiltshire.
 
One of the purposes of this forum was to stimulate participation in the Youth and Adolescents community of practice in the IBP Electronic Communication System. All of those signed up for this forum are registered members of that community and can continue to have a virtual discussion of the issues about youth. Below are instructions on how you can continue these discussions if you are interested. Please note: these postings will not be organized by YouthNet and the INFO project into a structured discussion. Depending on resources and ongoing interest expressed in the discussions by participants, future organized forum discussions will be considered.

To conclude this forum, three sections of information are provided below, divided in these areas:

  1. Instructions for Ongoing Discussions on IBP Electronic System
  2. Summary of the Evaluation Results
  3. Web Resources Summary — a summary of the links mentioned during the forum (by week) for easy access

We hope this forum has provided useful resources and shared ideas that will help meet the challenges ahead for our work towards pregnancy prevention among youth in a time of AIDS.

Best regards,

Ed Scholl, Forum Moderator

On behalf of YouthNet, The INFO Project, and the Implementing Best Practices in Reproductive Health Initiative/World Health Organization

**************************************************************

Instructions for Ongoing Discussions on IBP Electronic System

You can continue to participate in a discussion about youth issues via e-mail or online. The moderators of this forum will no longer assemble postings as a digest, pose questions, or feature weekly guest speakers. Instructions for how to participate online or via e-mail are below.

To visit the Youth and Adolescents IBP online community, click here (you must know your username and password). If you want to post a discussion item, click on the Community Discussions link on the community home page and follow the directions. Your discussion item will be posted online and sent to all members as an e-mail after being approved by the community technical moderators.

To write an e-mail message to the members of the Youth and Adolescents Community, use the address youth@ibp.wa-research.ch.  It will be sent automatically to all members of the community after being approved by the technical moderators and will be available as a Discussion Item in the online community.

If you wish to quit the Youth and Adolescents Community, click here.  Thanks for your participation in the forum.

To request help via email, write to info@ibpinitiative.org.

If you want to continue to be a member of IBP and the Youth & Adolescents community, but do not want to receive e-mails, you can go online and change your personal settings. Click here to go online. On the Youth and Adolescents Community home page, click on "My Account" (upper right of screen), where you can change your settings to receive e-mails daily, weekly, monthly, or not at all.


Summary of the Evaluation Results

We have been collecting survey responses this week in an effort to find out how useful this forum was to you. We would like to thank all of you who took the time to provide your feedback, and we are happy to now share the results with you. The first part of the summary contains quantitative information. The last part includes examples of how participants have used or plan to use material from the forum and suggestions for improving future discussions.

Of the 654 subscribers to this forum, 73 responded to the survey, an 11% response rate. Respondents came from 37 countries and represented a wide variety of organizations including NGOs, academic and research groups, faith-based organizations, and government agencies.

Overall, respondents felt that this forum was at least partially fulfilling many of its stated goals. The majority of respondents were satisfied (35%) or very satisfied (64%) with the content of the discussion. Most respondents felt there was the right amount of discussion (74%); 16% felt that there was not enough, and 9% said that there was too much discussion.

Virtually all (99%) said the forum definitely or somewhat met its goal of generating meaningful, relevant, and timely conversation about effective practices in adolescent reproductive health.

About half of the evaluation respondents posted a message on the forum. Most people (78%) participated in the forum primarily by e-mail, although 6% participated online and 16% used both approaches. About 35% of the participants who went online did report having some problems logging on to the IBP Electronic Communication System, while the other 65% did not. 

The majority of participants (59%) forwarded some of the postings to other people.

Most participants preferred the digested e-mail format (82%) over receiving e-mails as they were posted (18%). An overwhelming majority (93%) felt that involving a guest panelist in the discussion each week was useful.

Thirty-one percent reported already having used resources or practices discussed or recommended in the forum while an additional 49% plan to use them. More than half of the participants (54%) downloaded and read some of the materials recommended or discussed, and another 36% said they planned to do so.

Some examples participants gave of how they used or planned to use the materials were:

  • We have held workshops and will continue to do so in the area of adolescence and fertility awareness and some ways to negotiate the negative consequences of this period. In addition we have done some limited assertiveness training for girls. I want to follow through with our work to include the concept of "diversion techniques" to manage sexual feelings, and explore a "What I want to control in my life" concept. This will be grounded in a human rights approach.

  • I am working on an AB program and I gained some new insights in behavior communication strategies.

  • As a cartoonist, the messages have to be put across in a witty manner. The ideas are being incubated.

  • Information especially about targeting parents in interventions.

  • Voluntary counseling and confidential testing. This will help teenage mothers in rural areas to be better informed on the risk involved when pregnant without making and HIV/AIDS test.

  • The forum has taken place at a time when we have just done the baseline survey for our peer education programme. I used much of the issues raised through the forum to meaningfully contribute to the interpretation of the baseline findings.

  • The information shared about young girls and sugar daddies was especially helpful, as were the question and responses on the ABCs and gender.

  • I have been using the resources collected to update my own knowledge and skills, but over all in training activities for young people and adolescents in my community.

  • Some of the ideas /practices of other countries definitely will help me in my work with youth giving technical assistance and guidance to youth.

  • I am working in PMTCT and not ARH right now (so was slightly less active, also not writing in comments) but I enjoyed reading materials and comments. I also shared some of the resources I printed out, with district HIV/AIDS coordinators in the province where I am working at the moment).

  • I have been training parents to be Peer Health Educators.

  • The use of drama and counseling.

  • I am currently writing my dissertation, which relates to adolescents and sexual health in Uganda. I will likely refer to some of the postings as I discuss my findings.

Participants had a number of useful suggestions for improving future discussions, including:

  • Shorten them if possible, or have fewer topics, but thank you for providing an interesting online forum that allowed us to share ideas and information from people across the world.

  • Include more practical field base exchange of experiences.

  • Get more participants.

  • Designate e-mail stations or outlets in certain cities where participants could gather and participate.

  • Focus more on each issue which may mean more time (two participants).

  • Provide guidelines or some structure on what is to be posted. e.g., if it is study results or strategies or case studies of successful interventions.

  • Develop a topics guide & distribute it at the beginning. Or give prior notice before the start of the forum so we could do some home work for the forum.

  • Ask members to contribute to what topics they think would be useful and include this information in the discussion.

  • Find an easier-to-use response mechanism (two people).

  • Guest panelists who come from different countries to reflect their experiences, especially those with cross-cultural experience.

  • Allow participants to use any language (two people).

  • Give certificates to participants (two people).

  • Organize in conjunction with local face-to-face discussions.

  • Moderator's summary of each day's posting was very helpful, especially when I didn't have time to read each posting in depth.

  • Appreciated the guest panelists' comments; would definitely suggest continuing the practice of posing questions to participants and inviting them to respond via postings.

  • Accessing the Internet to participate was inconvenience and costly (several).

  • Provide a final summary of the whole discussion and draw some inferences from it.

  • The only thing I regret is that I am so busy that it was hard to take the time to sit and read the discussions, but it was all very interesting. It was great having a moderator, who was able to pose questions and guide the discussion, as well as provide comments to submissions based on experience. I think for the people who were able to participate more, I think the time frame may have been a bit short, since several submissions came after the specific topic was completed. Maybe a longer more on-going discussion on specific topics would be interesting and provoke more response, but a moderator would be needed for this period to keep discussion continuous, otherwise people will forget to send their comments. It was really great hearing what other people had to say though and I feel I learned a lot from different perspectives.

  • Make sure all postings focus on the topics made available for discussion.

  • None. Thank you for this positive experience!

  • I think the structure is excellent and different from other summaries of other e-discussion forums. I would add the following suggestions: 1. include quotations from life histories from youth and adolescents. This could provide the e-forum with a young human face; 2. add to the debate what is said by international organizations such as UNFPA (Global Youth Partner on AIDS: GYPA Initiative), UNAIDS, WHO and regional offices, UNAIDS, IPPF, Horizons/Population Council, YouthNet/Family Health International and compare these policy health statements with what is said from youth NGOs and local youth networks; 3. include a section with a list of summaries from educational and training resources to work with youth and young people; 4. include news about new initiatives targeted to youth and adolescents.

  • Focus more on behavioral change communication, programs on prevention and behavioral change among youth; focus on resources for youth programs.

  • I would like to suggest that emails should be released as they were posted.

  • Get even more involvement from developing countries and also more from Asia.

  • I might try to include some more provocative discussions in order to get people thinking and also to try to elicit creative solutions.

  • I would like to include more practical tips to youth for changing attitudes.

  • Would probably not participate if it meant many e-mails throughout the day, by having only one, I could read it at any point I was ready.

  • Include resource persons from other professional fields like performing arts.

  • Give much more time to participants in the future to reduce time constraints then giving opportunity for quality participation.

  • For the future discussions, send the subjects in advance. Allow participants to use any language. Do the summaries after the forum. Give the educational material to all participants in advance.

  • To extend the amount of time devoted to each topic to more than a week. Just yesterday night I had a chance to go over all the contributions and discussion. One point that I saw was that we have somewhat focused on the topics and not quite explored the more interchangeable and comprehensiveness of the discussed topics. For instance at the very end we could have a more comprehensive summary of all the contribution for the theme "Pregnancy prevention in a time of AIDS" highlighting many of the issues pointed through the discussions and therefore a more holistic approach in dealing with ASRH.

  • I would like to include more practical tips to youth changing attitudes.

  • Have it in various languages.

  • The forum was good...can't think of any improvements except for the involvement of young people as responders. Given the difficulty in access to electronic communication in places like Africa, this might require more time for off-line discussions which could then be posted.


Web Resources Summary

Week 1: Needs of Youth

Week 2: Especially Vulnerable Girls

Week 3: Medical Barriers and Accessibility

Week 4: ABCs of Pregnancy and HIV Prevention among Youth — Country Perspectives and Lessons Learned


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