I think I found a way to save a million girls' lives.
And it's really simple.
Tell young girls in Southern Africa,
that older men are nine times more likely to have HIV.
They think it's the total opposite.
They think young boys, they're running around at the clubs,
they have raging hormones,
they're having lots of sex, they have HIV.
Older men are wise, safe, mature, married,
their wives have menopause,
they don't have HIV.
That's what everyone's telling us.
We've done surveys with 42,000 kids
in Botswana where I live,
and over 90% of people get this totally wrong.
Can you get to age 40 without being 21?
No, right.
If you could, that's awesome, please share, that's great.
But you can't.
And so if you're 40, you were once
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
all the way up to 40.
You're at exponentially higher risk.
So people are thinking about discreet risk,
instead of cumulative risk,
and 45% of 40 year old men in Botswana
are infected with HIV.
It's a pervasive myth.
And if you bust this myth, you can reduce pregnancy,
also a proxy for unprotected sex
and HIV by almost a third.
Randomized trials, the gold standard
of evidence have showed this.
10 years ago, and it was never scaled.
This was shown this dramatic intervention
which could have had huge ramifications
was shown 10 years ago and was never scaled.
It sat year after year after year accumulating dust
on a library shelf.
I read about this idea five years ago when I was at MIT
and part of this very lovely, but dust friendly enterprise
of research, essentially, you discover cool stuff.
And then it sits there.
And I loved it.
I loved the magic of taking data and numbers,
turning it into meaning.
I ran a lot of regressions in dark rooms at MIT,
and you discover stuff.
You could discover stuff that doesn't work,
that does, but I felt like it wasn't very meaningful.
Like my results were totally disconnected
from the real world.
So when I came to Botswana on a Fulbright
to do more research,
this time at The University of Botswana.
I saw things that made my heart stop
and my mind totally race,
sugar daddies, everywhere.
Older men who were giving young girls gifts
in exchange for unprotected sex.
And I talked to a young girl, a poet
and she read me a very moving poem
about an older man who had infected
a young girl with HIV, a sugar daddy.
And a paper, I read at MIT invaded my brain,
this dramatic intervention which worked,
could have saved the young girl's life.
And I was like, here's this huge problem.
And I think there might be a potential solution
and they've never met.
I was like, this is my chance to not just do research
but use research to save lives.
And so me and Moitshepi and Brenda
and Unami the founding team.
We said, we don't need a dollar.
We don't need a pula.
We don't need a penny.
We're gonna start.
So we piloted clinic, schools
and we started an NGO called Young Love
dedicated to scaling HIV awareness programs
shown to work to millions of youth, scaled by youth.
And it's been amazing, even though sugar daddies
is a very taboo and uncomfortable topic to talk about.
The community has embraced us, 'cause backed by evidence,
we're not in the business of feeling good.
We've got a high potential solution
and we're in the business of doing good.
And so what do we know?
We know that giving relative HIV risk information
can create real behavior change, but that's not enough.
You've gotta deliver it right.
You can't send old crusty officials to talk
to young girls about sex.
But as many of you probably know it happens all the time.
And so at Young Love, we do it differently.
We scale messages by youth, for youth.
We harness the credibility,
relatability, engagement and pizzazz
of youth for maximum traction.
Our messages work and our delivery model is maximized
for impact on the youth.
And we've learned some cool things along the way.
Like I said, you can't just walk into this classroom
with your proven intervention and talk to kids about sex.
It's awkward.
It's uncomfortable.
It's what we tried to do at the beginning.
No one was talking.
So what do you do?
What would you do?
And the solution's really simple.
And it wasn't found in research.
It was found in our youthful bones, an icebreaker.
When I say young, you say love, young
love. Love.
Young
love. Love.
I didn't know if you were gonna join me.
So I had to call out for myself.
Yeah, simple.
You're ready to talk about sex or more ready.
Instead of having kids just tell them that the HIV rate
by age, we have them guess it in small groups.
They guess it totally wrong,
and they commit to it in front of the classroom.
Then we do a drum roll, reveal the graph, gasps,
physical gasp they're shocked, shatter expectations.
They remember the risk forever.
It's been amazing.
We got a mandate from the Ministry of Education
to reach every child in the country.
And with the local staff of 50 young people,
we've reached 343 schools and 30,000 youth in the last year.
We've only been around a year,
and we're hoping to reach one to 2 million more
in the next two to three years in Southern Africa.
So I've made a shift from entrepreneurial researcher
to a research loving social entrepreneur.
It's a small niche, but it's one I deeply believe in.
I used to be enchanted by the magic
of taking data and numbers and turning it into meaning.
And as a researcher, I created meaning.
Now I turn those results and papers
into campaigns for millions or soon will.
And as a young social entrepreneur,
I not only create meaning, I create real impact.
Pretty sweet.
Thank you.
Thanks Noam.
So there are organizations a lot older than yours,
with less sophistication in their approach or evidence base.
And I find your energy and passion extremely compelling,
but you work in Botswana where age actually does matter.
And although in the classroom, youth might be an asset.
What about when you go in and you're talking
to the Ministry of Health or government?
How does youth work for you
or against you in that situation?
Wow, it's an intense question.
And we've gotten many bizarre looks, me and my team,
and my development manager at Unami actually
sits on committees with very high level folks in government.
And when we walk into a room, people go,
ah these guys don't know what they're talking about.
And so it's been a big challenge,
and I think we've managed to do well
because what we're doing, and when you see it in the field,
we actually invite folks who are skeptical,
and not skeptical, but especially skeptical into the field.
They come into the classroom, they see the kids' reactions.
They go, whoa, you guys kind of are onto something.
And so we don't just talk, talk, talk about it.
We say, you don't believe us come and see it.
And so we are able to schmooze and convince people
to see it in action.
And when that happens, it clicks.
And then that's when we get the credibility,
not 'cause of our age or wrinkles, not that old people
have wrinkles, but because of the sheer proof
of concept of what's happening.
Makes sense.
So there is a good article in Foreign Policy recently
called international developments awkward phase.
And it talked about how everyone speaks
so earnestly about challenges with youth
and how important it is to invest in youth
and address unemployment, address sexual
and reproductive health, but nobody actually does it
because it is messy and complicated,
but right at the time when people are about
to become healthy and productive adults maybe
is when the sector doesn't invest as much.
It's easier, and there have been real gains
from investing in vaccinating kids, for example.
Why do you think the international
development sector doesn't invest in youth?
Hmm.
Or do you think they do?
Maybe you think they do.
And I, so I guess there's two ends.
Why would you invest in someone beyond the youth
and before the like adolescent youth phase?
I think sometimes people think that that kind of slightly
beyond teenager group it's almost too late.
Like what's happens, happened,
but that's not true.
Actually, most pregnancies happen
in that age group in Botswana.
And that's a key debilitating factor.
That's when you're dropping out of school
and HIV infection rates
are 5% at the 15 to 20 year old range.
And then they shoot up to 45%.
So it actually is the critical window.
And so I think when you just think about behavioral change
and how people's habits formulate over their life
you think it's too late.
When you actually look at what's happening
at that age group, it's the critical time.
And it's when those messages are most salient.
If you tell a nine year old don't have sex
you know, they're like, what are you talking about?
Or maybe not four or five, six, but at, you know
at like 12, 13, 14, 15, they're like,
whoa, I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's salient to me.
And like, whoa, maybe there's a way I can save my life
and get an education and have a better life that I deserve.
So what's it like for you to be younger
than the people on your team?
Yeah, that's great.
So I'm younger than most of my amazing staff
and it's exciting.
I think it's really exciting.
Do you think they think it's exciting?
I think they think it's shocking.
So I was just having a conversation
with my research manager the other day Sedi,
and she was like, I can't believe you're so young.
How old are you?
23.
And there's a quote that I really like
that we say in Young Love,
'cause we say it as an organization
but also individually, it's not the years in your life.
It's the life in your years.
And so we believe that really deeply.
And for us, it's all about what you can do
not how many years you have, you know
on your life scale or what have you.
So it's not the years in your life.
It's the life in your years.
Thanks, Naom.