SIECUS helps American and European youth learn and exchange advocacy strategies.

This winter, SIECUS, along with Advocates for Youth, Marie Stopes International, and You Act (a European youth coalition) planned a joint American-European Youth Advocacy Summit, which took place in Brussels in February 2005. This conference was the beginning of an ongoing exchange among American and European youth advocates and resulted in the development of a Programme of Action to promote and protect young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights. SIECUS and our colleagues provided advocacy training to 50 young people (25 from European Union countries and 25 from the United States). We helped them strategize about ways to protect and promote sexual and reproductive health and rights and to devise an action plan to implement in their home countries.

To choose our youth delegates, SIECUS held an essay contest for young people throughout the United States ages 18-25. Young people were asked to tell SIECUS about their efforts to advocate for access to reproductive health education and services locally, and how that work relates to sexual and reproductive rights and health internationally.

Of the nearly 150 submissions, 12 winners were chosen and were flown to Brussels with the SIECUS international policy staff. The young people who were chosen hailed from: Austin, TX; Brooklyn, NY; Chicago, IL; Hadley, MA; New York, NY; Norfolk, VA; Portland, OR; Spokane, WA; St, Paul, MN; and Washington, DC. SIECUS also made local press aware of the Summit and two of the participants were profiled in their local papers, The Oregonian and the Virginia Pilot.