DSW’s Women Deliver Daily Diary – Day 2: babies, babies babies

This is the second in a series of blog posts, following DSW’s participation at the fourth Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen. Read the first entry here.

Women Deliver day 2 – where you look up from your computer and see ex-Australian PM Julia Gillard sauntering past. In today’s – the second – daily diary from Women Deliver, we talk sex, babies, journalism and I talk to Women Deliver young leaders.

Women Deliver Day 2 – Early risers

Day two of the conference – but the first day of real meaty discussions – kicked off early (and not so bright) this morning. Women Deliver covers many and various issues linked to women’s’ empowerment and gender equality. My second day at the conference would be dominated by the core work of my own organisation – sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Education and youth engagement featured heavily in the morning sessions I sat in on. Youth activists working with the Dutch SRHR Alliance spoke about efforts the Alliance have been working on to develop a comprehensive guide for people working to develop and implement programmes aimed at young people. Young people and contraception featured heavily in a subsequent session, focused around the World Contraception Day Ambassador programme.

Women Deliver and the WCD Ambassador programme

I was particularly keen to join this session as DSW is a proud partner of World Contraception Day, and we have seen the project grow from the concept stage to delivering on stage a group of articulate and assertive youth advocates from around the world who are working in their local communities to push forward access to contraception and sexuality education.

You can find out more about the WCD Ambassador programme online here, and we hope to be featuring them more in our social channels over the coming months as we build up to World Contraception Day on September 26.

With such a heavy programme and too many events to take in at any one time, it is a relief sometimes to just be able to sit down, take a moment and watch the crowds of people pass by. The diversity of the crowds at Women Deliver is a testament to the scope and reach of the issues being talked about, and the movement of women (and men) working to resolve and overcome them.

Comprehensive sexuality education – two approaches

On the subject of youth and SRHR, I was lucky enough to sit down and talk to two women who are working on comprehensive sexuality education in their own ways. Adriana Radu is here is Copenhagen as a Women Deliver Young Leader. She is a YouTube star from Romania who produces videos as Sex vs the Stork (Sexul vs Barza). In the clip below, Adriana talks about why she started her video series, and what she is working to change in her home country.

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I also spoke with Preethi Sundaram – who you can hear second in the clip. Preethi is a Policy and Advocacy Officer with IPPF and the author of a report launched at Women Deliver this morning about “Everyone’s right to know: delivering comprehensive sexuality education for all young people”. In the interview you can listen to below, Preethi sets out the need for comprehensive sexuality education, and some of the recommendations included in the report. You can find the report here.

And tomorrow? More chats with youth ambassadors, more discussions on SRHR, and hopeful a spin of the VR rig set up in the UNFPA’s booth.

P.S.

Babies! Women Deliver is full of babies and toddlers. Or, more specifically, more babies than I have seen before at a high-level international conference. Is this a Danish thing? A reflection of the commitment of the many of the men and women participating to be here and to live their principles? I even saw several women walking through the exhibition hall with plastic baby toys wrapped in slings. Not even the oddest sight of the day. That accolade goes to the scene I came upon as I was leaving for the evening, and saw a Muppet character being interviewed and posing for selfies at the WDLive studio.

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Our favourite tweets of #WD2016 – day 1