You and Me

Specific components of the project included:

• Reaching Urban Youth - a Creative Approach to HIV/AIDS Awareness, a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)-funded project that reached out to vulnerable youth through interventions in popular bars and clubs in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong. This programme provided information through youth-friendly materials and events. It also increased young people's access to affordable high-quality condoms by installing condom machines at entertainment establishments.
• ASH/HIV/AIDS Awareness among Middle School Students. MSC worked with the China Middle School Newspaper (CSMMN) to develop a four-page feature issue for World AIDS Day 2001 that reached over one million rural and urban middle school students throughout China. The feature focused on issues relating to ASH including puberty, decision-making in love and relationships, life skills information, and STI/HIV/AIDS prevention. In addition, a series of advocacy, awareness-raising, and training activities were conducted with 600 participating middle schools in Guizhou, Sichuan, Henan, and Beijing. Several workshops for media professionals were also conducted. The CMSSN developed a bi-monthly column addressing sexual health, development issues, and life skills issues. A newspaper was piloted through a variety of distribution channels in Sichuan.

Youth, HIV/AIDS, Health, Family Planning.

This programme involved an evaluative component that tested styles and methods of raising sexual health awareness among university and middle school students, with a focus on peer education programmes, lectures, quizzes, exhibitions, computer education programmes, a music concert, and development and distribution of information, education, and communication (IEC) material. The evaluation concluded that many of the interventions had a positive effect on knowledge and attitude levels among students, teachers, parents, health workers, and policy makers. The final evaluation may be downloaded in PDF format at the UNESCO website.

MSC was established in 2000 to deliver sexual health care and education to Chinese people, with a particular focus on underserved and vulnerable groups like youth and migrant populations. MSC built on the experiences of the 'Play it Safe' 2000 World AIDS Day Concert (part of the UNFPA Project) by conducting a youth-friendly mass media campaign (including TV, radio, and magazines), linking it with a series of concerts/road shows organised by young people in terms of both design and implementation. The organisation seeks to stress the roles that young people can play as advocates at press conferences and advocacy meetings.

In the context of the lack of high-quality, affordable, non-judgmental services for young people, MSC conducted initial feasibility studies and identified possible sites for clinics in Shenzhen, Beijing, and a Western city. The clinics will involve extensive outreach services and education to the community at large, intended for in-school and out-of-school youth and migrant workers.