YPD Report!

1.

The Kramfors YPD- group has implemented a safer sex campaign called “Kramfors Safer Love”. The main venue and time for this was during Stadsfesten in Kramfors on June 12th and 13th, where we had a tent with activities and distributed condoms in the festival area.

According to the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (Svenska Smittskyddsinstitutet) Chlamydia, Syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, are on the rise among young people under the age of thirty in Sweden. This trend is equally prevalent in Kramfors municipality and even though the statistics has shown some improvements in the last two years, the problem remains. In order to combat this problem among youths, a change in risk behavior and attitudes towards sex is required. The Kramfors group is of the opinion that discussions, information and distribution of contraceptives will effectively contribute to positive change.

Throughout the campaign we achieved following objectives:

- To promote awareness of STIs and sexual health in Kramfors

-To engage young people in discussions about sex and sexuality

-To encourage condom usage and safer sex

-To promote access to health services among youth in Kramfors.


2.

The Kramfors YPD-group's main focus has been to target youth about sexually transmitted diseases and sexual health throughout a one-month campaign. The group has distributed condoms and information through leaflets and discussions, and also engaged youths in games and activities centered around sexual health and behavior. However, it has been a vision for the group to not only focus on the negative aspects of sexual behavior, but also to promote a fun and healthy sexuality.

Our first practice took place at the Kramfors city square, on 23rd of May. We had an information table, invited people to join our “sex and STI-quiz walk”, distributed condoms and served coffee and cookies.

The second information/promotional session took place at the local high school, Ådalsskolan on 27th of May. We set up a so called “Magic Box”, were the youth could put notes with questions related to sex and relations. We also promoted our campaign by distributing leaflets and posters.

As mentioned before the main session took place during Stadsfesten in Kramfors. The tent featured a relaxed environment with beanbags and live music. The central focus of the tent was the activities which functioned to invite youths and adults for discussions around safer sex.



By executing this campaign the group is hoping to increase awareness of STIs and sexual health, to directly reduce risk behavior among the population by distributing contraceptives and to engage youths in fruitful discussions in order to problematize and analyze issues pertaining to sexuality and sexual health.


3. To facilitate the work we divided the responsibilities into three working groups; Promotions group, Sponsor group and Event group.
The main responsibility for the promotion group consisted of designing and printing posters, leaflets, t-shirts and other material needed for the activities in the tent.

The sponsors group seek funds from local companies, such as coffee, tea, cups, spoons cookies, sugar and t-shirts. Furthermore they also contacted the County Council in Väster Norrland, an NGO named Afrikagrupperna, and RFSU Umeå to get free condoms in order to carry out the project. Additionally they arranged for education sessions about different methods to distribute condoms and how to talk about safer sex. The workshops were held by RFSL Sundsvall and RFSU Umeå.

The Event group planed the activities and games that were used in the tent during Stadsfesten. They also promoted the campaign in the high school and put up posters around Kramfors.

Our group collaborated with NBV (Nykterhetsrörelsens Bildningsverksamhet). All our group activities related to the project were considered as a “study circle” and therefore we got funds from the organization.

Kramfors Municipality collaborated with us by letting us use their tent at Kramfors Stadsfest. The Kramfors Stadsfest organizer På Stan supported us in our activities. Kramfors Youth Health Centre supported us by giving us different kinds of information folders that were be distributed in our tent at the city festivities.


4. Expected and actual result.

The results from the groups project campaign matched our expected planned results fairly accurately in almost every area.
The initial project proposal listed the following expected outcomes:
- the distribution of as many condoms as possible
- to engage as many local people as possible to increase the awareness of issues pertaining to the campaign (safer sex, condom use, STIs)
- to create a fun and conducive atmosphere where above results could be achieved and a healthy, positive sexuality.

The campaign mainly took place in three different venues and times, as initially proposed, were activities and distributions of material took place: the town square, the local high school Ádalsskolan, and on two dates at Kramfors Stadsfest.

Roughly sex thousand condoms were gained from our generous sponsors RFSU/RFSL, Landstinget, and Africa Groups Sweden. These were subsequently distributed throughout the campaign which culminated at Kramfors Stadsfest on the 12th and 13th of June.

Throughout the campaign, and especially through the arrangement at Stadsfesten, the group managed to distribute information and material to a large number of people in our proposed target group and to be highly visible. Material distributed included educational leaflets on STIs, documents on sexual health and positive sexuality. Other less tangible but equally or more important activities included general discussions on sexuality, questions walks (tipspromenad), condom usage instructions and scenario discussions. These were all popular features throughout the project and were carried out to the groups satisfaction.

In connection to the campaign, promotional t-shirts and posters were printed and a tent and a space for it were acquired for Stadsfesten in order to host activities and distribution. A number of sponsors were also generous enough to supply us with material such as coffee, tea, cookies, cups, etc. for distribution to the public.

As a result, the group believes that the awareness of the relevant issues has been significantly improved in both direct and indirect ways as proposed.

5. The project will be handled over to the midwife at the youth health center who will help the youths with issues related to sex and make them understand themselves as boy and girl and what it means.

We also expect that it will live in the future if other organisations will work in line with activities dealing with youths in cases of sexually transmitted infections, youth sexuality and share information on safer sex.

Lastly, we hope that the youths themselves will come out in the open and ask questions that they cannot ask their parents by so doing they will create a rapport with the midwife and themselves.

6. Millennium Development Goals (MDG):
Trough implementation our group campaign project it achieved the millennium Development Goals number 6 which states that Combat HIV and AIDS, Malaria and other STIs. Because the component of health promotion (Condom Distribution/ Information Dissemination) involves motivation to adapt to promoting behavior and helping people make decision.

7.
Our project did very well, it exceeded our expectations.
We had almost 6500 condoms and we distributed almost every one of them and 130 persons participated in our question walk during our big day at Kramfors Stadsfest.
The people reacted very positive of our campaign and many people had heard about us.
We’re a little bit surprised that it was so difficult to get the youth attention in the age between 16-18 years old. The most of the youth were around the age of 12-13 years old.

Everyone in the Kramfors group did participate in the project planning very well. We divided us into different groups and every group had different tasks.

One thing that we have learned and that we’ll do different the next time is to have someone in charge of the money and write everything down.
Another thing is that our project planning meetings took long time and we’re not so structured at the last couple of meetings.

8.
To CIU and KYA, We thought that to implement the project is not easy, so it is better to prepare every thing before we start to do it. However, if we have already prepared we also have to think about the result of the project as long as you want it to be effective and sustainable. The most important point that every one wants to do the project is to be close in the group, everyone in group by trying to have fun together.

The project got fund from NBV, CIU and some materials from Hemkop, ICA, Coop, Colour of love, RFSU, RFSL, the total budget among 4700 Kr. And the project was spent 3174 kr. The project was finished successfully and it we got enough fund, if we did not got some fund from the other Organizations and stores the budget from CIU will not be enough.