Prior to her PEAK Fellowship, Nancy Ochoa had never traveled outside of Peru. In hindsight, she now realizes how much this fact limited her approach to her job -- fostering leadership development and reproductive health education among rural Andean youth.

With the support of PEAK, Nancy was exposed to youth programming in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. Her fellowship included internships at Advocates for Youth (AFY) in Washington, D.C., and CEMOPLAF in Ecuador, as well as a CEDPA Youth Development training course and an AFY European Study Tour.

Nancy says her experience working at Advocates for Youth and her trips to Europe and Ecuador have changed her paradigm for working with youth. She now realizes that she, as a programmer, can have a voice in her community’s access to information and that she need not be silenced by local political and religious groups. As she put it, “It was very helpful to see how European nations with a strong Catholic background could still provide easy access to contraception for adolescents, including emergency contraception.” Her fellowship has inspired her to work toward eliminating the traditional guilt-ridden sexual education messages that she believes alienate young people in her country.

Nancy’s applied project focuses on empowering youth and educating adults to incorporate youth organizations in their community’s decision-making processes. Through participatory workshops and related activities, Nancy is training youth groups in areas such as reproductive health, leadership, and small business development. Thanks to her exposure to CEMOPLAF’s population-environment programming, Nancy also plans to include agricultural production in her trainings so that youth groups can generate income in an environmentally sustainable way.

“Because of my PEAK exposure,” says Nancy, “I am no longer the same. I have doubled my commitment to provide information to adolescents and to become an instrument that creates possibilities for them to have a realistic perspective about sexuality and a vision of their participation in society.”

Please note that the duration of Nancy's placement is not typical for current cohorts.