The Reproductive Health Training Center (RHTC) has launched a set of 25 animated educational videos on sexuality and sexual rights, which will be used for instructing medical students and young people in general. The videos are uploaded on the YouTube platform; they are available to and can be viewed by anyone. This set can also be used by anyone for conducting activities, as long as the source is indicated. The educational set was launched on Thursday, February 10, online, via the ZOOM platform; the activity was attended by the RHTC partners, including non-governmental organizations from the Republic of Moldova and Romania which work with young people or promote young people’s rights.

The 25 videos were created by AMAZE, an organization from the United States of America, which offered the right to translate them into Romanian to the RHTC as a partner organization in the Republic of Moldova.

This set of video materials covers a number of topics such as puberty, healthy relationships, sexual orientation, personal safety, pregnancy and reproduction, gender identity, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV.

The videos are post-synchronized in Romanian, and Romanian and Russian subtitles are added. This set of videos is unique in this format in the Republic of Moldova and is already available online. The videos will soon be posted on social networks.

In addition, the RHTC plans to prepare a paper information support containing the information from these videos. This information support will contribute to conducting workshops for training coaches for medical students.

According to Clay Cook, Project Coordinator, the RHTC intends to contribute to the existing sex education efforts in the Republic of Moldova and Romania by using these videos in order to overcome the problem of lack of materials on sex education issues. This open access educational source will be subsequently used for conducting information sessions prepared by medical students and residents for their peers and young people in general. “We would also like to identify new opportunities to cooperate with other organizations for promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights,” Clay Cook added. According to the project coordinator, the videos on human trafficking, online safety, sexting, harassment, and sexual violence will be released soon.

Rodica Comendant, RHTC Director, believes that, “with the help of these videos, teachers can open the doors to sexuality-related topics and discuss serious issues in a way accessible to young people.” The group of the first beneficiaries of the educational video set will include girls and women with disabilities who will be taking part in a workshop within a RHTC project; they will be trained as health and sexual and reproductive rights coaches. Rodica Comendant also considers that involving medical students in their last years of studies in the workshops which include this set of videos “would be good, considering that it would be useful for their own health and contribute to their ability to share their knowledge with their peers and young people who need this training.”

In a video message, Cynthia Chinchilla, AMAZE Global Partnerships Program Coordinator, said that via this cooperation, AMAZE is pleased to contribute to the RHTC’s efforts to improve access to comprehensive information on sexual and reproductive rights and gender equality for teenagers in Moldova and Romania. “We appreciate the vision of the RHTC which affirms that every person, regardless of their origin, sex, gender, age, ethnicity, or other factors, should be able to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights freely and openly and have access to sexual and reproductive health services and information,” Cynthia Chinchilla said.

Daniela Draghici, an expert in sexual and reproductive health from Romania, congratulated the RHTC and the Republic of Moldova on “being ahead of Romania again”: “Yesterday, the Contraception Atlas was launched, and the Republic of Moldova has 69.5% compared to Romania with only 54.5%, listed in the category of countries where the use of contraception is far from perfect. Why? Because we do not have such videos.” The expert congratulated the RHTC on its achievements.

Catalina Gutul, Vice President of the Association of Medical Students and Residents, considers that the set of videos is part of an important initiative, because students are eager to have a better training in sex education, but sometimes the resources are insufficient. “Now we have the resources,” Ms. Gutul said, stating that the set was “informative and sometimes funny, which is a very suitable approach for students and young people.” She added that the association was eager to take part in promoting the videos, and its members would be happy to be trained to be able to inform students or their younger colleagues about sex education later.

Galina Lesco, Head of the YK “NEOVITA” Youth Friendly Health Center, appreciated the Romanian translation of the educational video set and making it available to young people in Moldova. Galina Lesco assured that the videos would be shared with youth friendly centers and posted on the center’s website and on the web pages of the Youth Klinic Moldova network, and the centers’ volunteers would be sharing them on the networks. In her opinion, the initiative is very good, and she appreciates the fact that the Russian subtitles were also made to improve the viewers’ access to it.

Veaceslav Mulear, LGBT Health Program Coordinator at the GENDERDOC-M Information Center, thanked “for the enormous work and comprehensive thematic approach of the videos, which also took LGBT community-specific issues into account.”  He considers that they can be used by teachers, organizations, and civil society, and watched by young people “because they are easy for them to understand.”

The videos were launched as part of the project “Improving access to inclusive and rights-based sexuality information: an arts-based approach” implemented in partnership with Karolinska Institutet and funded by the Swedish Institute within the Creative Force program.

Access information:

Access to the animated video set on sexuality and sexual rights on the YouTube platform: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLejwvuY0eTV2xSIxk5pPfskU9oXoN5BDh

AMAZE website: https://amaze.org/romanian/

Video recording of the event:
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