“My husband and I have donated to IPPFWHR for the last twenty years and included the organization in our estate plans because it aligns so well with our values: lightening human impact on the Earth by empowering women and girls.
These days, as governments willfully neglect both climate change and the people (primarily women and girls) who suffer as a result, reproductive choice seems more important than ever.
For these reasons, I visited IPPFWHR’s local partner in Mexico, Mexfam, to experience their work. That’s how one day I found myself watching teenagers play an enthusiastic game of “erotic twister” in a Mexico City park. Spin the dial to “right hand on red” and show that you know how to put a condom on an anatomically correct dildo—or have it demonstrated for you. “Left hand on yellow”—insert a female condom into a rubber vagina. “Right foot on green”—learn about assertiveness. Depending on their spin, kids might learn about topics such as medical revision, sexual exclusivity, flavored condoms, and faje, the practice of clothed kissing and caressing that doesn’t lead to penetration. A boy in a “Porn King” tee shirt learned that interest in pornography is natural but it isn’t healthy to spend too much time viewing it and pornography that depicts harm to women or involves children is bad for everyone. As the game progressed, the teens got more and more entangled until they collapsed in laughter. Youth volunteers from Mexfam’s Gente Joven program gave them free condoms for participating. Then they looked for a new group of kids to play the game.
These Gente Joven teams enter a park or a schoolyard in their matching Mexfam baseball caps, tee shirts and boxes of props and condoms like a sex-ed SWAT team. In couples, they approach groups of teens to encourage their participation. During the games, their peers listen with disbelief to the explicit, professional explanations. They laugh in embarrassment. But the openness and ease of the Gente Joven gets to them. They start asking questions. They want condoms.
This is a good thing. Mexico has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Sixty percent of sexually active teens become pregnant. One out of three pregnant women is a teenager. Teen pregnancy is associated with maternal and infant mortality, less education and poverty. In addition, six out of ten women in Mexico experience some form of violence. Cultural norms play a role. For example, until 2010 there was no law against rape within a marriage. Many kids don’t think girls have the right to refuse sex if they are in a relationship.
Mexico’s status as the world’s fourteenth largest economy means that it is no longer eligible for many kinds of family planning/sexual education aid (for this reason, Trump’s expansion of the “gag rule” won’t have a big effect there—aid has already been withdrawn and many clinics have closed). Yet extreme structural income inequality has left nearly half of Mexico’s citizens in poverty. Climate change, likely to bring even more drought to Mexico, will intensify the challenges faced by today’s teenagers. They need access to reproductive options and education about the social factors behind gender based violence as they make choices that will determine the pathways of their entire lives.
Experts at Mexfam collaborated with Gente Joven volunteers in a three year study of how to effectively communicate with teens about birth control, sexually transmitted infections and gender based violence. “We’ve tested this curriculum,” Angelica Garcia, head of social programs for Mexfam told me. “We know it works.” The teen volunteers of Gente Joven are enthusiastic about delivering it. They see the need among their peers and enjoy being authorities on such an interesting topic. “It didn’t seem right that so many girls had dropped out of my class because they were pregnant,” a fifteen year old boy told me. “I became a volunteer so I’d know how to talk to people about sex.”
With Mexfam’s training, he leads his peers across a bridge, from a place where sex cannot be spoken about and girls drop out of school, to a place where sex can be explained in explicit, factual terms, and kids know their birth control options and how to find non-judgmental health care. They learn about their sexual and reproductive rights, including the right to pleasurable sex and the right to refuse even socially accepted forms of psychological and physical coercion and violence. Some peer discussions go further, asking “What is the purpose of your life?” In this way, the Gente Joven encourage their peers to consider their options, to plan and to aspire.
I didn’t expect my exploration of family planning in Mexico to lead to sex-ed games for young people in a park. But I now understand why it did. Mexfam’s research determined that games are an effective vehicle to deliver the sexual information that is essential for teenagers to make informed choices. A professional social worker and a room with a few chairs for each team in 15 different Mexfam centers enable 350 Gente Joven to reach thousands of their peers with this evidence-based curriculum. For the money, it’s a highly leveraged program. The only limit to its expansion is more funds.
