Building camaraderie through community-led video on adolescent health in Kogo, Equatorial Guinea
Sexual and reproductive health challenges facing adolescents remain urgent across sub-Saharan Africa where adolescent girls and young women continue to bear a heavy burden of new HIV infections. In Equatorial Guinea, HIV remains a grave threat to sexual and reproductive health. An estimated 6% of the population lives with the virus. Until 2017, treatment was available at just two centers.
This is where community-led communication becomes a powerful complement to public health efforts.
In July 2025, illuminAid partnered with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Working through UNICEF's Adolescent Development and Participation Programme, the team conducted a video education workshop in Equatorial Guinea. The goal: equip young changemakers with the tools to create their own participatory health education videos. Across two sessions, participants collaborated closely, built strong camaraderie and brought their own ideas, voices and lived experiences into the creative process. That participation is a core value of illuminAid.
During the workshop, participants produced original videos addressing HIV stigma, gender inequality, peer pressure and mental health. Bilingual and accessible to low-literacy audiences, the videos were created for use in community screenings. By the conclusion of the workshop, three original videos had been completed and screened in the presence of local authorities.
The training also served as the launchpad for a year-long Capacity Development Program extending into 2026. Through this grassroots approach, youth leaders will continue producing videos and leading local screenings in urban and rural communities. They'll also collect beneficiary feedback to assess comprehension, then track behavior change related to HIV prevention.
For illuminAid and UNICEF, this initiative demonstrates how participatory media can strengthen health education by combining creative technology, behavior change communication and grassroots leadership. It offers a practical, community-rooted model for advancing evidence-based social and behavior change communication in Equatorial Guinea.