Geneviève Doukoya, a 22-year-old student at the University of Maroua, Cameroon, started on the road to a healthier life four years ago when she picked up an issue of 100%Jeune, a magazine created by youth for youth, addressing sexual and reproductive health issues.

One Saturday a couple of years ago, 16-year-old Edgar Anibal Miranda sat in his bedroom in Guatemala City, listening to the radio. He was surprised to hear a group of young people talking openly about sexual health issues.

“It was strange,” he now says. “I’d never heard anyone talk about these topics – not my parents, not even my school.”

Whitney Davis, 18, could have been part of a startling statistic: by the age of 19, nearly 60 percent of all women in Liberia have started childbearing.1

1. 1. Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS) [Liberia], Ministry of Health and Social Welfare [Liberia], National AIDS Control Program [Liberia], and Macro Internation

It is Wednesday, and the Amour & Vie weekly radio program – Love & Life in English – is starting in 15 minutes. Patricia Montcho and her co-host, Yann Kounde, look over their scripts and run through some lines. African pop music streams proudly through the crowded radio station.

Ruslan1, 20, had difficulty making new friends when he moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Soon enough, he fell in with the wrong group of kids in a nearby neighborhood. They often talked about cannabis – they knew where to get it and how to buy it at a cheap price.

1. 1. Name changed to protect identity and privacy