Social networks are developing each day
Sitting outside Lilongwe Youth Life Centre on a sunny Thursday afternoon, 24-year-old Rodrick is glued to his phone. When asked to show some of his posts, he asks “what do you want to see, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook?”
Rodrick and his friends laugh at a post of a smiling cartoon condom fighting off multicoloured STIs.
SheDecides promotes change through social media
Rodrick is a trained Social Media Agent for SheDecides, a movement empowering youth to champion the rights of girls and women to make choices about their lives and bodies and have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education.
18 January 2021
In Chigude, a usually quiet rural village in northern Malawi, young people gather around two tables laughing and chatting animatedly.
On one table, they are playing a traditional mancala board game Bawo. On the other, volunteers demonstrate putting a condom onto a wooden model penis. Though this is inevitably met with shouts and giggles, the largely male crowd watches intently.
“Most of them have come here for condoms, but I don’t just give them out,” says Kondwani, a 22-year-old Youth Action Movement (YAM) volunteer. “I ask them how do you use a condom? How is it useful to somebody who is using it?”