With UNESCO, Beyond Borders Media created the campaign ‘Youth Stories’ (and ‘Voix des Jeunes’ in French) to advocate for better education related to Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR).

In West and Central Africa, it is needed to provide young people with the means to avoid early and unwanted pregnancies and child marriages, prevent HIV, deal with gender-based violence, such as female genital mutilation, and combat school dropout rates, particularly among girls.

Faced with these challenges, it is important to give young people the opportunity to tell their stories, make their voices heard and advocate for better education so they have the knowledge and skills to make responsible choices.

Often these topics are taboo and young people are not able to speak out or gain knowledge. Through this campaign, UNESCO wanted to break open the debate.

Youth Stories is a touching set of stories recorded with 10 young people from Togo, Cameroun, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal. BBM is proud of this campaign all recordings are done in West Africa. This campaign reached over 6.000.000 young people and is currently still live.

We created a ‘safe space’ for recordings and to showcase the young people as ‘stars’ inspired by music videos. Recorded in a studio setting, with neat styling and make-up, no reference could be made to the social and economic background of these young people. this way, the story remains genuine without any association.

Beyond Borders Media travelled to three countries with small crews to capture engaging short personal stories in a safe environment.

BBM recorded 10 interviews, in French and English, with young people that openly shared their stories. All films are edited to 5-minute versions recorded from 2 camera positions.

A local female stylist and a make-up artist were present to support and transform these young people into real stars. They made them feel proud. For each interview, plenty of time was scheduled as these were intense and emotional recordings for these young people.

Below are a few of the videos we created. All of them can be seen here.