We are incredibly excited to announce that La Ventana has been voted the winner of the Sharecare Award in the Health Activism category 2021. This is a huge win for pleasure-based comprehensive sex education.

From Rwanda to Kenya to Pakistan, check out the stories behind the incredible youth centered and youth driven work being carried out by some pretty inspiring people.

“To me, youth engagement means that youth have the power to innovate and find solutions to their own issues. Our work is to facilitate that conversation and provide them with knowledge and tools to make it an effective and efficient engagement.”

Good design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In 2020, our Cocoon project team was able to conduct design research and prototyping in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda despite the incredible challenges that the year brought. Our team codesigned safe, private, and accessible spaces and services for menstrual health management (MHM) and menstruation education. Here are five ways that they were able to continue to lead design work when everything went wrong.

Our team has worked in 15 countries on projects that are centered around young people and the subjects that matter the most to them; sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, livelihoods, and mental health. Here are the values that define our work, keep us mission-aligned, and shape our partnerships and projects.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, young people are accessing health products, including family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) methods, at local pharmacies. These small businesses are integrated into the local community, offer confidential services, and are led by committed health professionals. Meet three pharmacists who work hard every day to deliver youth-friendly care in Rwanda!

We know that digital self-care platforms will be a critical building block as we work to build a safer and healthier future –  because we have seen first hand how one is working in Rwanda.

After significant COVID delays, YLabs to launching the first randomized controlled trial of a digital behavior change intervention to support adolescent reproductive health

The YLabs 2021 Youth Leadership Cohort will have a platform to share their voice, gain valuable job and mentorship experience, be paid for their time and expertise, and work on solutions to the challenges that matter most to them. We will be accepting applications and recommendations for our incoming Youth Leadership Cohort in early 2021.

At YLabs, we’ve worked with young people, religious leaders, and government stakeholders to understand and explore issues that are typically kept quiet - so conversations about porn, safe-abortion, menstrual hygiene, and sexual pleasure are nothing new.

In 2020, YLabs worked with young people in the US to better understand how they process, prioritize, and seek care for their own mental health. We asked young people how we might normalize conversations about mental health by weaving stories about resilience and care-seeking behavior into the plotlines of popular films and tv shows. So listen up, entertainment industry! Here are three themes that young people said must be addressed:

At YLabs, we love to share our work - from our prototypes to our processes. So naturally, we were thrilled to lead a five-day course in partnership with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The course, Creating with Community: An introduction to Human-Centered Design (HCD) for Public Health Intervention Development, was designed to introduce senior public health practitioners to the practice of design.

At YLabs, we’ve worked with young people, religious leaders, and government stakeholders to understand and explore issues that are typically kept quiet - so conversations about porn, safe-abortion, menstrual hygiene, and sexual pleasure are nothing new.

At YLabs, we predominantly use youth-driven or youth-led approaches to guide the process of designing, testing and implementing interventions to support young people's health and economic futures. We believe a youth-driven design methodology puts young people’s voices and perspectives at the center of decisions that will affect their bodies, health, and futures. At YLabs, it has always been, and will always be about creating with, not for, young people.

“I work with young people to understand their experiences with friends, family, relationships, and health issues such as reproductive health, HIV, and gender. By thinking like a designer and working with young people, I am able to write content that is more authentic, valuable, and appreciated by our readers.”

Do you really want your digital intervention or health education product to succeed? Here's the secret: Hire a youth designer. "Involving, and hiring, youth designers from the very beginning of a project help to make it more innovative, more cherished, and more sustainable.”

YLabs participated in the 2020 Health Innovation Exchange to share our work and our passion for the potential of youth-driven design! The HIEx2020 event was a mix of thought-provoking panels, a virtual innovation marketplace, innovation pitching sessions, mentoring opportunities, and an awards ceremony to celebrate high impact innovations for global health.

One way we are working to make CyberRwanda desirable to young people is to create a strong brand voice and visual design. Our team has been hard at work creating a new brand identity for CyberRwanda, and we’re excited to give you a sneak peek into their work!

Wake up with YLabs during SF Design Week! Grab your morning beverage of choice and prepare to get your creative juices flowing. In this virtual show-and-tell, you’ll hear from YLabs designers as they share stories and insights from our projects around the world. We’ve worked with young people, religious leaders, and government stakeholders to understand, explore, and design for issues that are typically kept quiet like porn, safe-abortion, menstrual hygiene, and sexual pleasure.

Across the country and around the world, we join our fellow citizens and companions who are protesting, donating, and speaking out against the murders of Black men and women in America. As an organization that focuses on health and economic inclusion with young people, our work is inextricably tied to dismantling the barriers facing youth, including racism in all of its forms.