Not Your Usual Subjects: Podcast and Evidence Brief
Research, policy and practice show that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on young people’s SRHR worldwide: both by exacerbating existing SRHR challenges and unearthing new barriers. Not Your Usual Subject by Shake the Dust is an activation grant project of Share-Net International, and shines light on the most pressing SRHR issues through the eyes of young people. In doing so, it addresses the lacking visibility of young people’s voices and perspectives in public and expert-level discussions aiming to identify structural and systemic solutions to these challenges. By offering room for youth voices to, quite literally, be heard, Not Your Usual Subjects brought together diverse youth voices and signals recommendations on how action can be taken to ensure that young people’s SRHR is and continues to be ensured.
Not Your Usual Subjects is a podcast series by youth on COVID-19’s impact on long standing SRHR issues affecting young people reaching out to policymakers, practitioners, youth and the wider public. The series place young people’s stories at its core: both content-wise and because its youth-designed and a youth-led podcast production. In total, six podcasts have been produced on pressing yet under-reported thematic SRHR issues: sexual pleasure; Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) rights and violence; sex work; self-managed abortion; SRHR and disability; and SRHR in humanitarian settings.
Shake the Dust used podcasting as a participatory method of data generation and collection through co-created storytelling. The aim of the project was to co-produce knowledge with youth that is meaningful, relevant and actionable. The qualitative outcomes of the podcast series were coded through a grounded theory methodology and transformed into an evidence brief which calls to action policymakers, researchers and practitioners within the AYSRHR ecosystem to consider and take appropriate actions towards co-creating a just and equitable SRHR future with youth during and following the ongoing pandemic.
You can find the podcasts, a full overview of the project, and the evidence brief in English and French here:
https://storiestoaction.com/nyus/