Development action with informed and engaged societies
As of March 15 2025, The Communication Initiative (The CI) platform is operating at a reduced level, with no new content being posted to the global website and registration/login functions disabled. (La Iniciativa de Comunicación, or CILA, will keep running.) While many interactive functions are no longer available, The CI platform remains open for public use, with all content accessible and searchable until the end of 2025. 

Please note that some links within our knowledge summaries may be broken due to changes in external websites. The denial of access to the USAID website has, for instance, left many links broken. We can only hope that these valuable resources will be made available again soon. In the meantime, our summaries may help you by gleaning key insights from those resources. 

A heartfelt thank you to our network for your support and the invaluable work you do.
Time to read
1 minute
Read so far

Boys' Talk Radio Series - Global

0 comments
Boys' Talk is a series of five features from around the world that give young men the chance to talk freely about their attitudes to sex, drugs, alcohol and girls - and growing up alongside the AIDS epidemic. These have been, or will be uploaded to the world wide web (listen through RealAudio or an MP3 player) and they are also available in broadcast quality through InterWorld Radio, the radio news and features service from the Panos Institute, London - see the InterWorld Radio website.
Communication Strategies
In this series of 5 features we hear young men from around the world talking candidly about sex and drugs and growing up to be a man.
Programme 1: Growing up in Africa
Programme 2: Injecting HIV In Ukraine
Programme 3: Macho young men in Brazil
Programme 4: Beer and casual sex in Zambia
Programme 5: Young and Old in Uganda
Development Issues
Gender, HIV/AIDS.
Key Points
Teenage boys and young men aren't often seen as vulnerable or in need of protection. If anything, they have a reputation of being a danger both to themselves and to the society they live in. Statistics back this up - young men are the most likely social group to commit rape and be involved in violence, the most likely group to inject drugs, and the most likely to indulge in risky sexual behaviour. And it's precisely because young men take risks that they are, to a large extent, driving the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Many campaigners now say that in order to turn the AIDS epidemic around, we must understand why young men continue to take risks despite knowing about the dangers of HIV and AIDS. Yet it's not often that young men get the chance to talk about how they feel about their own behaviour.
Sources

Press release for World AIDS Day, 2001.