BYAN conducted an international worksop on Disability Sexuality and Accessibility, Talking about life skills, a civil society dialogue for Reproductive health education on 24th of November, 2021 where there were 85 + participants including Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind and parents with developmental disabilities where we discussed on the following

Program brief : This virtual international dialogue for the frontline activists, youth led organisations, service providers , funders and other key stakeholders to come together to strengthen the movement for life skills in diverse setting.  This festival is free to join and features dedicated thematic country sessions, networking spaces and special guests. We want you to make the most of this opportunity to share your experience and learn from other global actors in reproductive health education. Together, we will achieve better acceptance and integration of life skills.

Talking about life skills, more comprehensively – Civil Society Dialogue 2021

– a learning and networking dialogue on advocating for more open conversations on sex and sexuality in diverse settings

A coalition of life-skills activists, experts and donor agencies have come together to organise a Global Life Skills Dialogue. This will focus on grounding life skills activism in the grassroots contexts, questioning and re-defining who has ownership of curriculum definition, and ensuring that civil society have space to be part of, and lead the conversations.

The Dialogue will compliment and provide alternative perspectives to UN-led initiatives to promote life skills based education, providing space for local actors to lead the conversation. Grounded in diverse contexts, this is a chance to share expertise horizontally amongst and between civil society organisations, youth-led organisations, funders and allies in the global movement.

This is the right time to come together to reflect, retool, and make the next four years a period of significant progress and expansion for reproductive choice. The life skills movement does not have a natural policy dialogue space at the global level – unlike other less stigmatised subjects which enjoy dedicated UN representation. Policy dialogue must be accessible and open to grassroots activists and service providers, yet given the continued conflict over the subject, a higher-level of security and confidentiality is required in dialogue and decision-making.