Ipas > Opening doors to discussion in local Latino community

Opening doors to discussion in local Latino community

January 13, 2006

Ipas sponsored the "Gender or Sex: Who Cares?" workshop for advocates who serve Latino communities.

Ipas’s U.S. program recently conducted a skills-building training on gender and sex issues for members of North Carolina’s Latino community. The workshop aimed to spark discussion about sexual and reproductive health and rights within a culturally-specific framework.

Held in November in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the workshop utilized the “Gender or Sex: Who Cares?” curriculum, an Ipas collaboration with the Health & Development Networks. The curriculum supplies community leaders with the resources necessary to establish a dialogue about issues such as violence, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion.

“Learning how to discuss the root causes of these issues lays groundwork that is critical for increasing sexual- and reproductive- rights advocacy skills,” said Rivka Gordon, Ipas U.S. Country Program Director.

The “Gender or Sex” program recognizes that adolescents need to be educated in ways that challenge gender stereotypes that contribute to high-risk sexual behavior. It also acknowledges that service providers need to understand how gender-insensitive health and social services make it difficult for adolescents to gain access to the information and services they need.

Community leaders from both Orange and Wake counties were in attendance, including health-care professionals and advocates for Latinos. More specifically, Latina community advocates attended to learn how to better address gender and cultural issues and their role in the sexual and reproductive health of the state’s Latinos.

In late 2005, an Ipas five-county assessment of Latina reproductive health demonstrated a need for both better education and access to health services. The research was presented at a meeting with representatives from more than 20 organizations, including several area Latino centers; the N.C. Office for Minority Health and Health Disparities; and reproductive-rights nonprofits.

The “Gender or Sex” workshop helped build on the report’s foundation of research and forging relationships. By addressing reproductive-rights issues in cultural perspective, Ipas is working to create an environment in which service providers and the Latino community have greater capacities to discuss — and then tackle — the many health challenges facing this growing immigrant and resident population.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258