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SpunOut.ie blog: Getting down and dirty at the Young Decision Maker's Conference on Sexual Health.
There are only so many times in a man's life when you can reasonably agree to a gig involving the words “sexual health”, “video” and “young people” without going to prison, and last Friday at the Irish Family Planning Association's Young Decision Maker's Conference in Croke Park was one such event.
The valiant SpunOut.ie crew consisting of Emily (Captain/ SpunOut.ie's Youth Participation Officer), Andrew (arse-kicking Chef/ SpunOut.ie Youth Board member) and I (endearingly reckless Swashbuckler/ SpunOut.ie Youth Board member) set sail to Croker the night before, partially to make sure we had everything prepared in advance, partially so we wouldn't lose our minds in Friday morning traffic, and partially so we could experience the luxurious surroundings of the adjacent Jury's Inn.
Of course it wasn't all fun and chocolate pillow mints, as we had a pre-match briefing the night before (to ensure we freaked out the norms in the best way possible) and to record a small film for our section of the conference on sexual health and the media, lamentably not starring Elisha Cuthbert. I was also witness to an hilarious montage created by Andrew that had me consistently giggling like Mr. Burns for several hours thereafter.
After a hard night of working, punctuated by complaining about the fruit-based tea flavours and watching Die Hard, came the tough stuff, actually presenting at the conference. The first section was seriously interesting and refreshingly frank, with a talk on female genital mutilation from Dr. Monica Mhoja, which I doubt left anyone not willing to do their part to eradicate what is a truly barbaric practice that affects over a hundred million women across the world. Next was Doortje Braeken, who spoke with such invigorating liberalism on matters of sexual health and reproductive rights that it probably would have made Dana's head explode.
After a break it was our time to shine, when we laid out the SpunOut.ie credo for everyone to see and prepared the audience for what might happen in our workshop later on. We had about twenty people for the workshop, where they split up into three groups to record films based on their biggest respective sexual health issue, namely the myths surrounding it, the relationship between alcohol and teenage pregnancy and the stigma around getting pregnant. Highlights of the workshop included communicating through time with a young man named Eamon from the Tallaght Youth Service (it's, it's a long story...), the pregnancy group breaking down in fits of giggles and having to tell Minister Barry Andrews to keep it down cos we were filming. We're such anti-establishment scamps!
After a presentation from the ever-impressive Milford Sexual Health Reference Group, it was time to turn our lights onto dazzling again as we presented our workshop material in a newscast format, with Andrew producing and me presenting a cross somewhere between Stephen Colbert and a TV shopping network. Thankfully, our enjoyment : baffled ratio was at least three to one.
Overall, it was a typically enjoyable and frantic day for all concerned, and it's no doubt cemented our cornering of the lunatic contribution to fun conferences market. Huzzah for that!
By: Paddy Duffy
