Youth Coalition for Contraception Access
Ensuring access and information for young Indians
We partnered with the Gates Foundation to strategize a youth-led coalition to ensure young Indians have contraception access and info that fits their needs.
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Challenge
There is a social silence around contraception in India. Young people do not feel that their voices matter, there are few opportunities to influence decisions about contraception information and access, and those who want to take action do not know where to start. The result is sexual and reproductive health policies and programs that do not represent young people’s real-life needs and aspirations. A new kind of coalition was needed. The goal? To mobilize one million young Indians.
Strategy
Qualitative and quantitative research with young people across the country uncovered a wide range of aspirations and opportunities that contraception enabled — education, careers, gender equality, and financial stability, among others. This enabled us to build a narrative frame that placed contraception in the context of national progress: Effective contraception enables a new generation of young Indians to access opportunities, achieve their full potential and unlock personal and social progress.
Campaign
We developed mobilization and participation strategies for a coalition of young people and innovative organizations, conducted a co-creation workshop with stakeholders to create new public narratives on contraception access, and delivered an implementation roadmap to continue to grow this youth-led movement — including a set of success metrics against which coalition impact could be measured in the short and long term.
Impact
Our narrative framing for talking about contraception was grounded in young people’s realities, but was also inviting to policy makers and gatekeepers. And our dynamic structure for the coalition — informed by a wide variety of stakeholders and best practices — was designed to generate new youth-driven data, reach diverse youth at scale, support multiple types of funding and help youth voices to reach decision makers.