Experts in their Own Lives

Drawing of a globe with stick figures on the surface and clouds surrounding it. The text "our ideal world" is written over the globe. Each cloud had a statement written in it to signify an ideal, such as "no stigma".
Participant representation of an ideal world where adolescents are experts in their own lives

The theme of this week is that adolescents are the experts in their own lives! I’ve been working in the Maldives with UNICEF since December on an adolescent HIV prevention project.

I will write more soon, but in the meantime, the main take-away for the participants seems to be…”Adolescents are the expert in their own lives”. They are using that as shorthand to indicate when adults should trust young people. They use it to show that adults should listen to young people. And they certainly have used it to envision a better future!

This week-long training in the Maldives is focused on building the capacity of healthcare workers who work with adolescents. My goal is to co-create solutions with them. My goal is to have them consider what is already going well and build on that strength. I used many tried-and-true techniques from community-based participatory research (CBPR). 

As always, I am open to new contracts and to working together. I would love to work with you and your team in the same ways as I have done here. Please let me know how I can help you to build effective, exciting, and practice-based trainings.

 

PS: Now that I’ve wrapped up, you can read more here!

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