This year’s World Sexual Health Day theme, Sexual Justice: What Can We Do?, encompasses pleasure as a core part of sexual health and wellbeing. Sexual justice does not only mean dismantling the inequalities that many people face in accessing their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It means ensuring that people can enjoy their SRHR safely, positively and without stigma.
AmplifyChange is proud to be a funder supporting pleasure-based and sex-positive approaches to SRHR advocacy. In 2022, we were one of the early endorsers of the Pleasure Principles, underlining our commitment to mainstreaming pleasure across our work as a grant-maker and partner to local organisations. Since then, we have received 139 applications from organisations seeking to implement a pleasure-based approach as part of their strategies to improve SRHR in their communities. Of these, we have supported 18 projects across Africa and South Asia.
AmplifyChange grantee partners know best which advocacy approaches create impact in their contexts, and pleasure has been integrated across many of our core themes. Projects we have funded include
- advocating for pleasure-inclusive comprehensive sexuality education for young people
- improving access to SRHR for LGBTIQ communities and sex workers using a pleasure lens
- breaking down harmful myths that perpetrate SRHR stigma for people living with disabilities
- training midwives to integrate pleasure topics into prenatal consultations
- supporting survivors of gender-based violence through pleasure-based dialogues
You can read how one of our grantee partners, Encadrement des Femmes Indigènes et des Ménages Vulnérables (EFIM), used a pleasure-based approach in their community work addressing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in their Grantee Story here.
Beyond grant-making, pleasure has featured as a key topic in our Talking about Life Skills, more comprehensively and Speak Out to End GBV dialogues, with best practices highlighted by civil society groups from across Africa and South Asia. As a result of our partnership with The Pleasure Project and The Case for Her, we published an analysis of pleasure-based approaches to SRHR advocacy alongside a learning guide with practical tips for organisations seeking to become pleasure implementers themselves.
So, this World Sexual Health Day, what can we do to better support sexual justice? AmplifyChange will continue to fund local organisations seeking to break down barriers to SRHR for their communities across the globe. As part of this, we commit to continuing to support pleasure-based and sex-positive approaches to SRHR advocacy work and share learnings. In turn, we are supporting the development of a more pleasure-inclusive global SRHR community.
