infectious-disease class I realized for
the first time HIV is not the only
sexually transmitted disease at that
time I was a 27 year old girl who was
migrated from Iran and I was pursuing my
PhD was I the only person who did not
know anything about STDs couple months
later one of my friend who was suffering
from a very rare autoimmune disease
which was misdiagnosed with HIV for some
years called me and told me that she
came up with the idea to raise awareness
about sexually transmitted diseases in
the Middle East and North Africa the
spark was there and we just followed his
signs to make sure we are not the only
people who are suffering who do not know
anything about STDs in our community we
started to search online and we figured
out every day 1 million people get
infected with STDs and specifically in
the Middle East and North Africa there
are 26 million people who are infected
with the curable STDs and it does not
include herpes or HPV the two most
prevalent STDs worldwide back then we
were five grad students with one aim we
wanted to provide educational
information for the people who may not
have access to information about STDs or
sexual health either because lack
because of lack of education or the
stigma associated with this topic we
started to translate some information
from CDC up-to-date and other reliable
sources that we
new and modify them to make them
culturally appropriate for our target
population which were Farsi speaking
people all around the world if you don’t
know the native language of your on the
country that will come from is Persian
or Farsi and then one year later after
that call we launched our website the
first educational website about STDs and
sexual health in Farsi in the control s
website people can educate themselves
about the sexual health and STDs also
they can ask their question anonymously
from our volunteer group of physicians
so considering the fact that there is a
stigma associated with the STDs in our
community we provided the most important
feature of our website which is letting
people to ask their questions and our
volunteer physicians would answer their
questions within 24 hours and we used
the social media channels of course the
popular ones in Iran to promote the
services that we provide and it’s
amazing if you know that after two years
since we started this service our
physicians answered more than 12,000
questions and although we let people to
stay anonymous only 19 percent of the
people who asked questions from us
decided to not release their identity
and contact information also for
providing a better and more focused
services to our audience we started to
analyze the data that we got and what we
observed was a significant difference
that we were seeing in the questions
that are coming from females and males
females usually ask us questions when
they are experiencing symptoms or they
and they don’t feel comfortable to see
the physicians and they were afraid of
to do that on the other hand males
usually
protest when they have had sex in risky
sexual behavior and they are really
worried about their sexual health and
they’re wondering if they got infected
with any form of STDs we were providing
through and comprehensive information
about the sexual health and STDs in our
website but we were missing a very
important group of people in Iran who
did not have access to the Internet so
our team members decided to go back home
in Iran and then run some in-person
workshops to make that goal possible we
started to design some visually
appealing educational material with the
content that is appropriate for the
people with different levels of the
education these workshops are meant to
be interactive and we talk about the
signs and symptoms of the STDs the
available treatment and most importantly
prevention methods and at the very end
of the workshops people can ask
questions from the Midwife or the
physician of our team couple months
after we started running these workshops
about the STDs in Iran we figured out
that we cannot ignore the overlap
between the STDs reproductive health and
child sexual abuse and we came to that
conclusion after getting many questions
about basic concepts of the sexual
health also we had lots of personal
stories from the people who experience
child sexual abuse in their life so we
decided to expand our program and added
two other series of workshop the puberty
or sexual health workshops and also the
child sexual abuse prevention workshops
in the puberty or reproductive health
workshops we run some workshops for the
parents and all
so for the kids who may go through the
puberty who are going through the
puberty and let them know what are they
should expect from this period of their
time and one thing that we were really
that was really important for us was
that to make that puberty stage of life
fun and let the people to enjoy this
period don’t be afraid don’t be mad and
just just enjoy the time that they are
experiencing enjoy the changes but for
the child sexual abuse workshops we have
different approach we have two series of
workshops for the adults and also for
the children during the adult workshops
we focus on the importance of knowing
who are the potential abusers we let
parents know that usually abusers are
the people who their parents trust and
are very close to the children we talk
about the common scenarios that abusers
used to get close to the children what
are the signs and symptoms that a child
who has experienced child sexual abuse
may show and if they come across any
person who are experiencing these
problems what they need to do how to
manage the situation to minimize the
problem and most importantly we talk
about the prevention methods but for the
children workshops we have the different
approach we do not have any lecture
style workshop but what we do we start
with reading some books about how to say
no how to protect their private part
what is the difference between the good
touch and bad touch and then to
emphasize the concepts that we talked
about we do some interactive games we
ask kids to identify the private parts
and also we focus on the importance of
protecting it
and one of another game that we have in
the workshop is that input the
importance of the personal space let
them know that you have the right to
protect yourself by having the personal
space and at the very end of the
workshops encourage children to draw a
picture to have the take home message
with them forever
two years ago when we started this
program we were five graduate students
with no funding or support and our aim
was empowering the next generation we
heard so many notes and it took a lot of
effort to convince people to believe in
our vision but today after three years
we are not alone anymore
we are expanding every day and a really
good group of young educated people are
joining us and put the heart in the work
that we are doing I believe there are
not many people in this audience that
can read Farsi or Persian but this is a
sample of the message that we receive
every day from different people a person
got HPV vaccine another one gets tested
for the STDs other person got treatment
a girl do learned about our program let
her partner know about it and they
decided to educate themselves through
our website and these are the things
that are motivating us and then cause
that we stay here and don’t give up and
before leaving the stage I want to ask
every one of you to join us with your
spark and let’s have the revolution for
the sexual health education
no one should left behind because of
lack of education in her life thank you [Applause]