Open, honest and sex-positive, RNW Media\u2019s Love Matters programme is well-established as an innovative player in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for young people. With thriving platforms in five regions around the world, 2018 saw the Love Matters teams taking part in global forums and spreading the word about the unique Love Matters approach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Love Matters believes talking about pleasure is an invaluable tool in engaging young people \u2013 rather than the traditional SRHR approach focusing on avoiding disease and pregnancy. This pleasure-positive approach was to the fore when Love Matters took part in The International Conference on Family Planning 2018 in Rwanda. The team organised\u00a0the Pleasure Dividend<\/a>, a panel held in the main conference auditorium to talk about the role of pleasure in sex education and family planning. The session generated numerous online and offline conversations and a lot of positive feedback about the originality of the Love Matters\u2019 message.<\/p>\n Love Matters\u00a0also\u00a0highlighted\u00a0its global\u00a0nature\u00a0with the local teams hosting a total of seven sessions showcasing their recent online and offline interventions.\u00a0Love Matters\u00a0Arabic<\/a>\u00a0was among the few representatives from the Arab speaking region and the team impressed delegates with their innovative toolkit, designed for adolescent sex education; a first of its kind in Egypt<\/p>\n The conference was also an important opportunity to reach out to the local audience as Love Matters is soon moving into Rwanda. The preparation of communication materials in the local language was an effective tool in doing this.\u00a0Planning is now underway to take the Love Matters pleasure-positive\u00a0message to\u00a0the world\u2019s largest conference on gender equality and health and the rights of women,\u00a0Women Deliver<\/a>\u00a0in Canada in June.<\/p>\n Another important conference in 20i8 was the\u00a0Regional Health Network\u202f(RHN)\u202fAnnual Scientific Conference on Adolescent Sexual\u00a0Reproductive Health and Rights\u00a0in Kenya. The\u00a0Love Matters Africa<\/a>\u00a0team\u00a0presented\u00a0its work to SRHR professionals from Kenya and\u00a0Uganda\u00a0and\u00a0established important contacts with a range\u00a0of\u00a0organisations\u00a0and individuals.<\/p>\n Another milestone for Love Matters Africa in 2018 was expanding its reach into Nigeria with special\u00a0content\u00a0created\u00a0by Nigerian contributors,\u202fand the launch of the\u00a0Love Matters\u202fNaija\u202fFacebook<\/a>\u00a0page.The\u00a0page quickly proved a hit with young Nigerians, attracting almost 154,000 followers in 6 months.<\/p>\n Love Matters\u00a0Arabic\u00a0also strengthened its network in 2018, expanding its cooperation with the Association of Medical Students and organising an expert meeting with family planning and safe abortion experts in Egypt. A sexuality workshop was also organised for journalists and content creators in Egypt aimed at encouraging them to take a more open and progressive attitude towards the SRHR of young people.<\/p>\n The year ended on a high for the team when\u00a0a campaign on promoting emergency contraception went viral.\u00a0Centre-piece\u00a0of\u00a0the campaign was an\u00a0animated film<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0showing\u00a0a sperm and an egg rushing to get together knowing that the couple have not used any type of protection. They are unpleasantly surprised when they find out about the emergency contraception in\u00a0place!\u00a0Love Matters Arabic reached 3.7 million young people with this campaign, more than 10% of\u00a0Egypt\u2019s\u00a0youth population.<\/p>\n In India, the\u00a0Love Matters<\/a>\u00a0team\u00a0took\u00a0their expertise offline, training\u00a0youth\u00a0peer\u00a0educators\u00a0in Bihar state on how to use a specially developed\u00a0SRHR toolkit.\u00a0\u00a0The toolkit consists of written content, podcasts and fun videos on issues\u00a0taking a pleasure positive approach to issues ranging from\u202fmenstrual hygiene\u00a0and\u00a0safe sex\u00a0to\u00a0love and attraction,\u00a0and was created after\u00a0an intensive process of meetings\u202fand\u00a0focus group\u00a0discussions\u00a0with\u00a0peer educators and\u00a0local\u00a0youth groups<\/p>\n Head of the India project,\u00a0Vithika\u00a0Yadav,\u00a0also\u00a0attracted\u00a0attention as one of the stars of\u00a0#FemalePleasure<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0a documentary\u00a0looking\u00a0at the barriers to female sexuality and women\u2019s sexual pleasure.\u00a0Another\u202f2018 highlight\u00a0for Love Matters India\u00a0was the\u00a0campaign #IAmNotAlone\u202fmarking\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0International Safe Abortion Day\u00a0on September 28th. The campaign was geared towards\u202fbuilding a support system for women who have had an abortion or\u00a0are\u00a0seeking\u00a0an abortion\u00a0and included a\u00a0Virtual\u202fReality (VR)\u202ffilm.\u00a0The campaign was covered widely by\u00a0India\u2019s\u00a0media and generated many online\u00a0conversations with the\u00a0hashtag trending\u00a05th\u202fnationwide on Twitter.<\/p>\n The hashtag of the year for\u00a0our\u00a0Love Matters\u00a0China<\/a>\u00a0team was\u00a0\u2018#LOVEISLOVE \u2013 a response to the announcement in April\u00a0by\u00a0Sina\u00a0Weibo,\u00a0of\u00a0China\u2019s largest social media\u00a0sites,\u00a0that\u00a0they\u00a0would\u00a0remove gay, pornographic and violent content during a three-month clean-up campaign. More than 100 accounts and 56,000 posts were rapidly\u00a0removed, and\u00a0Love Matters China decided to protest the decision, launching \u2018#LOVEISLOVE\u2019.\u00a0Many gay followers posted photos with the hashtag, and there\u00a0were also\u00a0many posts by people saying\u00a0they\u00a0were\u00a0not gay, but believed in speaking out in support of the rights\u00a0of\u00a0\u00a0LGBT\u00a0Chinese. The hashtag\u00a0rapidly\u00a0generated 4.36 million\u2019s page view and 27,000 engagements. And after a weekend of massive\u00a0online\u00a0protest,\u00a0Sina\u00a0Weibo backtracked\u00a0saying\u00a0it would no longer target \u2018homosexual content\u2019 while still removing pornographic and violent posts.<\/p>\n The fifth\u00a0Love Matters project,\u00a0Hablemos de sexo y amor<\/a>\u00a0broke new ground in 2018\u00a0as the\u00a0first Love Matters project to\u00a0become\u00a0independent. RNW Media is committed to ensuring the\u00a0long-term\u00a0sustainability of all its projects and began planning in 2017 to hand over our Spanish\u00a0language Love Matters platform based in Mexico. The work of\u00a0Hablemos\u00a0is now being implemented via a well-established local SRHR organisation\u00a0Mexico Vivo<\/a>\u00a0. RNW Media continues to refine the\u00a0blueprint\u00a0for sustainability pioneered by\u00a0Hablemos\u00a0and aims to eventually establish a\u00a0network\u00a0of independent partners who will remain part of the global Love Matters family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Open, honest and sex-positive, RNW Media\u2019s Love Matters programme takes a pleasure positive approach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5782","news","type-news","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/5782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Local teams going global<\/h2>\n
Reaching\u00a0out to Nigeria<\/h2>\n
Viral animation<\/h2>\n
Pleasure online and offline<\/h2>\n
#LOVEISLOVE<\/h2>\n
Pioneering sustainability<\/h2>\n