María Elisa graduated as a Youth WINGS peer educator in April 2009. She is 18 years old and lives in a primarily indigenous community in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. She decided to join the Youth WINGS program because she saw many girls from her community getting pregnant at age 13 or 14 and she wanted to share reproductive health information with her peers so that they could protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections. Maria Elisa currently studies agricultural processing at a local technological institute. As part of this program, she is doing an internship with a community organization that trains artisans. At the organization, she works with many other young women, and María Elisa decided to do a presentation to them about healthy relationships using the information she learned through Youth WINGS. Less than three weeks after completing her Youth WINGS training, María Elisa gave her first formal educational talk, which was greatly appreciated by her young colleagues. She looks forward to doing many more talks in the future.
Ana Lucia, 18, is a high school senior who grew up with her paternal grandmother after her parents separated. She and her sisters later went back to live with her mother and stepfather in Guatemala City. Ana Lucia soon discovered that her stepfather was sexually abusing her sisters. He tried to abuse her too, but she told her mother what had happened. Her mother, however, did not believe her and she and her siblings were forced to return to live with her grandmother. Ana Lucia has always felt rejected and ashamed because she has imagined that everyone knows about her family situation. Becoming a Youth WINGS peer educator has been a positive change in her life. “The group is the best thing that has happened to me; there they don’t criticize me, they don’t make fun of me, they accept me as I am.” She now feels safe, confident and knowledgeable enough to talk with other young people about sexual and reproductive health. She advises her friends to practice safe sex and distributes condoms to them. She also talks to young people about how to protect themselves from sexual abuse. Ana Lucia knows first hand how it feels to be abused and to have one’s trust violated, and she doesn’t want other young people to suffer the way that she has.
Ms. Cumez is a student and part-time worker who had heard of the sex education presentations given by WINGS when she started studying at university. She knew that one of her classmates was a WINGS staff member and was interested in asking him about some doubts that she had. Ms. Cumez was worried because when she had sex with her boyfriend recently, the condom slipped off. She was afraid that she would get pregnant or get an infection, and wanted to know why it fell off and how to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Following her conversation with the WINGS representative, Ms. Cumez has decided that she will be more careful when she has sex. She feels more confident now that she understands how to effectively use a condom. She has also become an advocate for WINGS, and has told the administrators at the high school where she works that they should ask WINGS to come and give a presentation for the students.