Day two started on a high note with all our wonderful Youth Champions from Nepal who had literally braved a storm to get to this workshop 🙂

We started with a quick recap and then Anika Habib showed us a short film she has produced on the situation of unsafe abortions in Bangladesh. It was a short but powerful film ad she highlighted the key perspectives of the women’s right to control their own bodies, the right to choose and the right to a healthy life.

Bonita and Bidhya from Nepal then showed a short film made on their project with capacity building of Female Health Care Visitors. They identified a Primary health Centre which is considered to be the best one in their country and found that much work is still needed on awareness about the safe abortion law, the rights of women and the access to safe abortion without stigma or discrimination.

For the next session on updating ourselves on technical details of contraception and safe abortion we had small role plays. The Youth Champions demonstrated what it is like to respond to queries on the telephone with regard to contraception and safe abortion.

The third group showed us a press meet with hostile journalists insisting that abortion is a killing of life and how this was immoral and a sin. We realized how difficult it can be to defend our perspective in such a situation.

Learning points were that as advocates and activists we have a responsibility to be prepared and also create accurate and political and strategic messages that we can use with the media. Learn about the facts related to safe abortion in our won countries, factoids. Sound bytes that the media would we interested in and always remember to deflect all questions that attack or focus on the fetus and always keep the women at the centre of our discussion!

Nadine Moawad from the Association of Progressive Communications then gave us a rocking session on the internet and its politics !

More on that tomorrow !