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Kampala, Uganda - Today nearly half of the World’s population – around 3 billion people- are under the age of 25. As these young people become sexually active, sexual and reproductive health services are under increasing pressure.

In a world of adult concerns, young people are often overlooked. While the number of young people will continue to rise in coming years, countries that meet youth’s needs now will be in a far better position by the second half of the century. These are some of the key points of UNFPA's State of the World Population Report 2014 The power of 1.8 Billion: Youth and the Transformation of the Future.

With a quarter of the world’s population under 24 years old and 90 percent of them living in developing countries, now is the time to invest in the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people. Only that way developing economies will be able to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend. This was the message of Young People and the Transformation of the Future, an interactive afternoon held in The Hague on November 18.

The World Starts with Me, the internationally renowned sexuality education programme of Rutgers, will start in Burundi in 2014. The comprehensive programme is part of BIRATURABA! – meaning It Concerns Us - a joint programme of CARE and Rutgers. BIRATURABA! aims to contribute to gender equality and to improve the sexual and reproductive health of young Burundians.

The Burundi government has recently adopted a national module for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in all schools. It even decided to train community workers and health workers in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights so that the information will be more widely accessible within communities and the healthcare system.

Teachers from 10 schools in the Northern Region of Ghana have been trained on how to teach comprehensive reproductive health.The aim is to help educate teenagers at the junior high schools (JHS) about their bodies and the impact of early sexual activities on their lives. The training is under the NGO’s teacher facilitation training of ‘My World and My Life’ (MWML), which is being piloted in some schools to equip the beneficiary teachers with skills to teach sex education. The MWML curriculum is developed by Rutgers.

In April, Savana Signatures (SAVSIGN), a Tamale-based NGO, launched the Ghanaian CSE program ´The World Starts With Me´ (WSWM). With this launch Ghana is the 11th country in Africa and Asia that provides young people a comprehensive and evidence-based programme on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Recently Rutgers Indonesia, in cooperation with all eight partners, launched a smartphone app ‘Sobat Ask’, which translates to ‘Ask your friend’. It is the first app for Indonesian young people that allows them to gain access to accurate, reliable, non-judgemental and youth-friendly information regarding a range of subjects relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The documentary Sex in Class was broadcasted on Channel 4 in the UK on 6 august 2015. In this programme Belgian tv-presenter and sexologist Goedele Liekens advocates for a more explicit style of sex-and-relationships education in British secundary schools. A pilot was held in a Lancashire school. Right after the show #SexInClass was trending topic on Twitter UK.

The documentary 'Sex in Class' in Great Britain has proven that young people need to counterbalance what young people 'learn' from porn, that they learn about their own bodies and how their body works, that boys and girls share their views and opinions about sexuality, and that girls especially, learn to speak up for themselves. Has the time come for the Dutch Approach?

In October an expert meeting took place in Pretoria (South Africa) on SRHR education and HIV prevention programmes for adolescents and young people. For three days 100 people, from 18 different countries, working with and for young people and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and HIV prevention had the opportunity to link policy and practice. Read a reflection of the results in the online magazine called ‘More Access and Better Quality’.

The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Burundi has today approved EUR 17.4 million in funding for a joint national programme “Improving the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents and youth in Burundi” (2016-2020). Over a period of five years the programme will be gradually scaled-up nation-wide.

The Essential Packages Manual is a comprehensive guide for successful sexual reproductive health and rights programmes for young people.

On May 19th Rutgers will give a special lesson on sexuality education to a committee from the Dutch Parliament, which has caused quite a stir. Rutgers will be accompanied by sexologist and television personality Goedele Liekens and a group of students. During the lesson Rutgers will promote the idea that empowerment should become an integral part of the primary goals i in education regarding sexuality and relationships. Rutgers hopes that the Netherlands will continue to encourage other countries to address this issue as well.

The Youth Week organized by Share-Net Netherlands and its members takes place from 26th – 30th of September at Humanity House, The Hague and De Balie, Amsterdam.

People regularly ask what the training sessions of Rutgers entail, for example on Comprehensive Sexuality Education. Maeva Bonjour, technical advisor at Rutgers, shares from the first hand her experiences in training people from 2 partner organisations in Benin.

We probably all remember our own first sexuality education lesson. At least I do! When I was 12 my male teacher told us that sex was actually about having respectful relationships. I remember feeling flabbergasted. Wasn't it about (not) having sex and babies, and the birds and the bees etc.?

A memorandum of understanding was signed to develop a sign-language curriculum called Life Skill Based Education (LSBE) for young hearing-impaired people that lack the necessary resources. It was signed by the Family Educational Services Foundation (FESF) and Rutgers Pakistan, said a press release.