Hi all,

It was a pleasure to meet you all in London, to hear your
stories and to learn about the exciting work that you are doing. I am
glad that we have created this forum and the youth newsletter so that
we can continue to follow these efforts.
I am currently working with the White Ribbon Alliance for
Safe Motherhood at their global secretariat in Washington, D.C. For
the next few months, I will be working to develop a three year plan
for youth engagement. My job is to try to understand the role of
youth in the maternal health campaign and to design a structure that
will best support youth involvement. As you can imagine, this is a
bit of an overwhelming task, there are so many strategies for
involvement and so many projects already underway.
I am writing to all of you today because I think you could be
of tremendous assistance. I spoke with a number of you at the Women
Deliver conference and asked you the very question, "what do you
believe is the role of youth in this campaign? How should youth be
involved?" and your answers have given me a better understanding of
the overall youth perspective. Your stories, work and insight proved
how valuable youth are in this campaign. I am currently in the
process of working through the foundational concepts of this campaign
and researching current strategies and best practices. I would love
to hear more feedback and gather more information from anyone who
would be willing.
The strategy that I am working on will incorporate inter-
generational and inter-cultural partnerships. We want to harness the
strength of youth to youth campaigns, but we want to involve youth
from around the world, not just those in countries with the highest
rates of maternal mortality. We want this model to serve as a example
of the global commitment that will be necessary to make motherhood
safe for every woman. But we want this to be more than a youth to
youth campaign. One thing that I think a number of youth echoed at
the Women Deliver conference was the idea that "you can train the
voice to speak, but you must also train the ears to listen". I think
that it is important to incorporate intergenerational partnerships,
while preserving the strengths of youth to youth campaigns, because
in the end, youth need the support of their community.
I know this posting is a bit vague, but I thought I would at
least open up the idea for discussion and see what sort of interest
there may be and what ideas some of you may have. I would love to
hear people's thoughts and comments on this. Also, if anyone has any
additional information that you think may be useful to me, such as,
information on best practices or current strategies, I would really
appreciate it. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!