Felix Scholz
What actions are you taking to promote and protect the health and rights of women and young people worldwide?
Based on this, last year I started my blog, Critical Masculinities, where I talk about how ideas of masculinity operate in society and culture. I take special effort to make the content and style of this blog relevant and accessible to a broad range of people. Recently I’ve been writing some pieces around masculinity and sexuality for the teen and young adult sex-ed website Scarleteen. I volunteer for XY Online, a pro-feminist website and online resource focused on men, masculinities, and gender politics. I also volunteer for the organization Youth Empowerment against HIV/AIDS (YEAH), where my role is to facilitate the distribution of educational resources to governmental and non-governmental organizations. That just about covers my ‘formal’ efforts to promote gender based equality and health, but daily conversations around and advocacy for the health and rights of women, especially sexual/reproductive health and rights are I believe, significant actions in promoting change, globally and locally.
What is your vision of lasting change for yourself and for the world's young people?
I believe that positive engagement with younger people, in the form of active participation is crucial to implementing meaningful social, cultural and structural change. I also believe that educating younger people will promote leadership and facilitate meaningful dialogue. Access to knowledge and other resources would allow young people to educate themselves and provide them with tools with which to make positive change in their own lives.
A world where young people are empowered with these tools would allow them to make educated choices about their own sexual and reproductive health and associated rights. This is the kind of lasting change I am working towards and would like to see. A change where we provide people, especially younger people who are so often marginalized and disenfranchised in multiple ways, with the means to become agents of their own change. In this way I believe meaningful and lasting change can be realized.
If you could tell world leaders one thing, what would it be?
Involve your young people in the processes of change; listen to them & enfranchise young people to take an active role in shaping their own futures. Don’t dismiss the experiences and opinions of young people solely on the basis of their youth.
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Go Felix!
this is great! Felix, you are a great candidate! go you!