Voices of Youth

Name: Karin Benson

Age: 28

Location: Conakry, Guinea / Brisbane, Australia

According to your business card – what’s your job title? I don’t have a business card, but I am a registered nurse, currently specializing in wound care. I work on the Africa Mercy, a non-governmental hospital ship that provides free surgeries for the people in West Africa. Most of my current patients have suffered from burn injuries that were never treated or from disfiguring tumors – all conditions that until they are fixed will prevent a patient from being able to go to school, make a living, or even be welcomed into society.

And how does that compare with what you wanted to do when you were 10 years…

Casual Sex is sex between two people who sometimes don’t know each other and are just sleeping together for the fun of it. When two youngsters are involved in casual sex, almost always 1of them becomes emotionally attached. They think that by having casual sex, more could result from the physical act but when the casual sex ends and one person moves on to someone else it can be dangerous for the person who wants something more. This may result in depression which may lead to suicide, bad school results and drug abuse.

Despite being a Bhutanese and having lived in Bhutan for over 17 years I was shocked at finding out about the Night- hunting practice that has prevailed for a long time now. Night hunting is basically an activity whereby men gain entrance into female adolescents house at night to engage in sexual activity.

It is said that if the man is found with the women the next morning, he would be assigned her husband. Although the practice was very high during the past it had decreased considerably now and takes place mostly in the rural areas as of now. As a result of the early night hunting practices we now have women and children affected by AIDS, we have poor…

“Isn’t it really dangerous?” they ask

And I purse my lips in response

“It is hard to explain to someone who has not lived there”

“Isn’t there always so much traffic?” they ask

And I shrug my shoulders in response

“I suppose there is, but much less than say, Nairobi”

“We’ve heard there isn’t much to do,” they say

And I shake my head in response

“I think you’ve been talking to the wrong people”

“We’ve heard it’s a pretty ugly place,” they say

And I raise my eyebrows and frown

“Only to those who don’t open their eyes”

“So why do you love this city so much?” they ask

And I smile widely

And my eyes light up

And…

I personally assumed that being gay in Indonesia is devastating, and I believe that the devastating conditions are also being dealt by my friends, who are in the Middle-Eastern and African countries. We have no one to represent our needs for at least recognition in our society. In here, most of the gay people just shut their mouth, and do nothing but hooking up, spreading STDs, and doing criminal actions. Most of the LGBT people in here don't really see the equality as a catastrophic problem that must be solved immediately. Young people who just found out about their sexual orientation keep losing themselves in the ocean of denial with no one to rescue them. Gay communities in social media…

In human life, proper sexual education is the most important topic especially for the adolescent. Most of the adolescents of our country are not aware of sexual education, so that they have suffered many diseases such as HIV/AIDS and many other sexual problems. The guardians of adolescents are not open with their children. They never want to openly talk with their children about proper sexual education, because guardians think that if they described sexual acts to children, their sense of moral will decrease.

In many situations, adolescents want to know about `sex,’ but they don’t get help or information.

Proper steps are :

• Open discussions with adolescents
• Sex education added to school text books.
• Parents & guardians relationship with their…

Hello everyone, I'm İdil, From Turkey. 4th of May is a holiday called hıdırellez in Turkey on which we celebrate the upcoming summer. It is an old tradition to show our greetings to spring and summer with nevruz and hıdırellez.

Nevruz is the beginning of a new year in old Turkish mythology and it means "new day". Since Turks had a nomadic lifestyle back then, it was really important for them for spring to come because spring meant refreshment and change so it was a new year for them. So you can think hıdırellez is like the second base of nevruz.

I think that having this kind of traditions make our culture very rich and interesting. Like the other cultures…

Believe it or not, the water on our planet is running out, and with it, the life and beauty of our environment. It is the responsibility of all, do what is necessary to protect our home planet, and ensure a healthy place to live.

It's amazing how years ago, our planet was safe, with minimum of pollution index, and that nowadays where supposedly we are more able to develop more efficient methods of protection, our planet is turned into a disaster, a chaotic world, where some places are dangerous and shortly habitable.

It is also a fact that is easy to contribute to the protection and care of our planet. It would be of great help in schools, children and…

Here in the United States we take the fact that we have access to education, for granted. I did too. However, my perspective on education was redefined this year, when I, along with 26 other high school students, traveled to Nicaragua to volunteer with the school that we help sponsor there. The Terra Linda High School Nicaragua Service Club at my high school, works with the organization El Hogar de los Niños to help sponsor a school that caters to over 200 children, ages 4-17 in one of the most dangerous neighborhood in Managua.

Throughout the year, we work to fund our own trip and sponsor the school. This past April, I traveled along and witnessed the beauty of international…