Youth advocacy summit: one voice.

SIECUS, Advocates for Youth, Sierra Club, and Population Connection came together to hold a weekend training institute called the One Voice: Reproductive Health and Population Summit. The One Voice Summit was held March 31-April 3, 2006. The four organizations sought to create a framework for participants that integrated domestic and international advocacy messages and environment and sexual and reproductive health messages for both youth and adult activists and gave the activists the information and skills necessary to create change in the following areas:

* How the administration's youth and reproductive health and rights policies do not support empowering women and youth;

* The connections between increasing access to family planning and slowing global population growth;

* The need for increasing pharmacy access for contraceptives, including emergency contraception (EC);

* Why funding for comprehensive sexuality education is critical; and

* How contraceptive equity in insurance coverage benefits women, families, and communities.

The goal of the summit was to help bridge the divide between domestic and international advocacy efforts around issues such as international family planning, HIV/AIDS, and sexuality education. Just over 100 participants, more than half of them young people, came to Washington, DC, for the weekend institute and policymaker education day on Capitol Hill. Participants included youth and adult activists, new and seasoned activists, and activists and speakers with domestic and international expertise and interest. Five youth participants, including four high school students, were selected through a nationwide essay contest and received an all expenses paid trip to Washington, DC. The co-organizers invited sexual and reproductive rights advocates ages 16-24 to tell us about the potential roles youth can play in advocating for sexual and reproductive health and rights domestically and internationally and how they would bring their experiences from the training in Washington, DC back to their campus and community in order to create change and further dialogue on these issues.

As part of the student-only portion of the training, each young person was required to develop an action plan for moving forward with what they learned at the training. Each action plan included one activity/event that was to take place in the spring before the semester ended, one activity/event over the summer, and two activities/events in the fall semester of the coming school year. The goal is to have at least 50 activities/events taking place by the end of 2006.