Resources for reproductive health education are scarce in many parts of Peru. When Women and Girls Lead - Peru NGO partners met to brainstorm ideas for producing a new piece of media to advance the campaign objectives of increasing adolescents’ knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, they agreed that there was a need for compelling material to support sexual and reproductive health prevention initiatives.

With the new year upon us, Women and Girls Lead Global is excited to continue our work around the world and inspire social change through the art of storytelling. See what we’ve been up to in 2015 and where we are headed in 2016.

On September 9th, Women and Girls Lead Global and our partners ITVS, Ford Foundation, USAID and CARE hosted a Global Gender Gap Challenge at the gorgeous GitHub headquarters. The goal of the event was to create new design and ideas that will transform the lives of women and girls.

In Pucallpa, Peru, youth filmmakers are recognized for their extraordinary work on their film “Don’t Back Down”, which focuses on reproductive health and its effects on youth education, similar issues that are focused on in WGLG’s campaign in Peru, “Ahora es Cuando”. Not only was the film successful in giving a voice to countless young people across Peru in their struggle to transition to adulthood, it has continued to build momentum since its red carpet premiere.

”Ahora es Cuando” – Now is the Time – is the name, and also an important message of Women and Girls Lead Global’s (WGLG) campaign in Peru. Traveling to remote rural communities in the Amazon and Andes regions, the WGLG Peru team found that parents and adolescents in these communities were deeply uncomfortable discussing important reproductive health issues and associated risks. Urging parents to talk to their teens sooner rather than later about these pressing issues, the Ahora es Cuando campaign highlights the important connection between timely access to reproductive health information and the completion of secondary school.