In this enlightening episode of Family Matters, Simon talks with Judith Cairns, the CEO of Love for Life, an organisation pioneering a holistic approach to relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Northern Ireland. Judith delves into the mission of Love for Life, which aims to help young people value themselves and their relationships within a thriving society. The discussion covers the organisation’s reach, impacting nearly 70% of Northern Ireland’s post-primary schools, and how their age-appropriate programs build foundations of self-worth, emotional management, and healthy relationships from as young as four years old. Highlighting the importance of parental involvement, Judith emphasises creating a supportive environment where young people can reflect on their choices and understand the full spectrum of their consequences—including themes like consent and personal dignity. With powerful testimonials from students who have participated in the program, this episode showcases the transformative potential of Love for Life’s approach. Join Simon and Judith for an inspiring conversation that not only sheds light on crucial aspects of youth education but also encourages viewers to reflect on the values they impart to the younger generation. You can check out more of Love for Life’s work at https://www.loveforlife.org.uk/
Show script auto-generated by Descript app:
FM Judith Cairns
Simon O’Connor: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Family Matters, and as always, thank you to everyone who has given me feedback on the discussions we’re having. I often say at this part of the show that “I’m all over the world” and I often am in interviewing our guests, but today’s guest comes from a country you’re probably not anticipating and a place that we haven’t spoken to before – it’s from Northern Ireland and it’s Judith Cairns. She is the Chief Executive Officer of a group known as Love for Life. You can find them at www.Loveforlife.org.uk.
Judith, welcome to the show.
Judith Cairns: Thank you. Yes, it’s lovely to be part of it.
Simon O’Connor: And I said you are from Northern Ireland; a place I have not yet got to. It just sounds like a marvellous part of the world.
Judith Cairns: Oh, it is. Everybody who comes to visit talks about how friendly the people are. From what I understand, I haven’t managed to get to your part of the world either. But from what I understand, there’s actually a lot of similarity in the friendliness and the welcome that folk receive.
And it is beautiful. And when the weather is good, if the weather is good there is nowhere else from the world you’d rather be, you’ve got coast, you’ve got mountains, you’ve got rivers, you’ve got forest. Oh, it’s just gorgeous. That’s lovely.
Simon O’Connor: We’ll have to trade places, so to speak at some point.
As I say, I’ve not yet made it to Northern Ireland and you clearly haven’t yet made it to New Zealand. We’ll have to do a swap. But of course we’re not here talking tourism, believe it or not, to our viewers and listeners. Love for Life and what Judith Cairns is actually a program around relationship and sexuality education, or RSE, as we often refer to it here in New Zealand.
It’s often in the news. I’m sure it is in Northern Ireland as in New Zealand, but your program came across my desk. People have spoken so highly of your work and what you do, and I thought it would just be lovely to have you on the show here on the podcast and just let our viewers and listeners know what you do.
So a simple question to start really, although quite a wide one, is tell us what Love for Life is all about.
Judith Cairns: Yeah, so Love for Life in a nutshell. We deliver holistic relationships and sexuality education in a variety in schools and in a variety of community settings and church settings as well. Our vision is that every young person would value themselves relationships, and sex in a thriving society.
And those words are deliberately in that order. It’s value in themselves first, in that we want them to understand their unique value and worth. And how precious they are. And then building on that, how they relate to one another, the key relationships in their lives and how they can be built, and how they can build strong, healthy relationships.
And then understanding sex and the consequences of sex, encouraging them to think through decisions, discussing boundaries, preparing for the future. We’re not presuming they are sexually active. Culture would presume they’re sexually active, but we are encouraging them to think this information through to prepare for the future.
Also to give them helpful information if it is something they are considering in the current moment. So yeah, we work across schools, community settings. So last year we partnered with 48% of our primary schools and 54% of our post-primary schools and. Particularly with our post-primary, some schools have us in every other year, so if you took that on a three year stretch we’re hitting almost 70% of the post-primary schools.
So it’s incredible opportunity and an incredible reach across many of our schools and young people.
Simon O’Connor: That in itself is incredible. Just that scope and reach. Like down here in New Zealand, there’s a small number of providers, but no one would get anywhere near the reach that you’ve got.
I have to show my Kiwi ignorance. When you talk about post primary, what age are we talking? Because we talk about primary, intermediate, and secondary school here so we need a translation.
Judith Cairns: Yeah, so primary school pupils would be aged four to eleven, and then post-primary is aged 11 to 18.
Simon O’Connor: So that’s the equivalent of our secondary schools.
So clearly a greater reach, obviously across all of them, but you were saying over 50% of the schools in Northern Ireland have your program?
Judith Cairns: Yeah, and this year I would think those figures, we’ve done a lot more this year. We’re coming towards the end of our term at the end of June, and we are definitely on target to reach to increase those percentages.
So the work is growing. It started in the post primary schools in that upper age group of the, probably initially the programs were for the 13 to 15 year olds, and then it has just grown over the years. That we now have programs right down to that first year, that primary one, for four to five aged pupils right through to, 18 year olds in the post-primary.
And I think today we’re going to stay focused on the school work. From what I understand, we may take a little turn into the church and the community groups, but it’s just recognizing that we do work in all of those contexts. But I think we want to focus on the school’s work for today.
Simon O’Connor: We do. I think that’s the primary area of interest.
But it doesn’t surprise me that your work would reach into other groups because, one of the key things, as I’ve read about your work and as others have talked about your work and what you’ve just shared already, is relationships seems to be one of the most fundamental underpinnings here. And if I might, it was that first part of your vision that you talked about is people coming to understand themselves as precious and valued, a relationship, if you will, to self. I mean that strikes me as so fundamentally important, and I don’t know what it’s like in Northern Ireland, but a lot of our young people are very anxious; resilience is a real issue; they worry about themselves and their identity. Is this something you are seeing and addressing there in Northern Ireland?
Judith Cairns: Oh, definitely. Our emphasis, we have a little strapline that ‘we want to create space for honest conversations about authentic relationships’.
And in today’s culture, young people need space. There’s just messages, there’s pressure. All of us are experiencing that. It’s not unique to being a young person, but we really try to create that space to allow them to pause; to allow them to think; to allow them to reflect.
And to understand that the absolute first point of you are valuable. Giving them that ownership, that their decisions matter and they are personal. They are not decisions that they need to make because other people are making them. They are personal to them and we want to equip them with the skills and understanding.
But we also want to empower them and to encourage them to reach out. They’re not islands, that we are designed for relationship. And so all those themes we build into our programs to encourage them to seek support from their trusted adults, to be good friends, to understand friendship.
All of that is just so key. But it starts from that basis of how unique, valuable, and precious they are. And the number of young people we get to engage with. Like last year we presented our programs worked with 52,276 young people, carers, and adults. So 47,000, almost 48,000 of those were pupils in schools.
And just what an incredible opportunity for those young people to hear that message. That, yeah, let’s look at culture. Let’s create space for you so you might respond differently.
Simon O’Connor: If it’s not too difficult, what does that look like in practice? I know you run many programs, so if you’re thinking particularly the really young ones, like for a 5-year-old or a 6-year-olds. How? Because I love the concept of allowing them space. How do you project or explain that to say a really young one or, for that instance, even a teenager?
Judith Cairns: Yeah I love that you’ve asked that actually because we have just recently, so last year, we piloted a program for that four to 5-year-old.
It’s four to six-year-old young people. And we call it Treasured. So it starts, it’s a really super engaging program where we will go into the classroom there and we will start with that you are unique. So they all get to bring their teddies or think about a teddy. They’re going on a teddy bear picnic.
They talk about their teddy and what makes their teddy so precious to them, and then we highlight that their teddies are all different – some of the soft and cuddly ones, others are pink and fluffy and others they’ve had them since they were born, but all of us have our teddies that are so important to us.
And we liken that to them, that, they are so unique and so precious and they are valued by the people who care and love them. And then we go on a little journey, on the picnic and they get to choose whether to go to the beach or whether to go to the forest for their picnic. And they start to do a treasure hunt.
And we have, two characters, Oscar and Martha, that travel through our programs and grow up with the young people. With Oscar and Martha, it allows, we find that storyline allows young people to engage with the story in an objective way. So we’re talking about what Oscar and Martha are doing rather than what you should do. But then we ask the questions about helping the young people to think how they might learn from what Oscar and Martha have done. So Oscar and Martha, they have a little falling out, and Martha teases Oscar and there’s a bit then where we pause and we talk about kindness.
So how can Martha be more kind to Oscar in this moment? How can they work through this situation and understand how they might respond to it in a more kind and caring way. Then they go about their trust, comfort a bit more, and they’ll choose who to ask for help for directions and that kind of thing.
And then they get to the point where this is a real overview. This program lasts an hour. But ultimately they are considering the qualities of friendship. They’re considering how to be kind. They’re starting from that place of understanding their uniqueness. And then they get to the stage where they find a little tin of treasure, and in it are things that are precious to our team.
So we’re explaining that whole emphasis of value and what we have things that really matter to our team, and then we ask them I wonder what would be in your little treasure box. But then at the bottom of this little treasure box is a mirror. I’m hoping that translates with my Northern Irish accent, a mirror.
We show the young people the little mirror and we show them that ultimately they are treasured and that is at the basis of everything. So loads of other activities in the mix, but it’s those kinds of foundational principles that are so important that we do talk about with children.
And I think of parents. We do a lot of work with parents as well because we want them to be really engaged in the conversation. We believe parents are the primary educators and as parents we have a really powerful role with our children. We think of these discussions around relationships and sex as being the puberty talk , talk about the birds and the bees and, all of that.
And we can feel slightly awkward. I would say we need to get over that culture that this is awkward, so we need to get over that. But secondly, actually, the conversation can start really young in a really beautiful way that starts to build those foundations, that starts to understand what is kindness, what is value, what choices can I make?
And then you can see as they grow up we can add to that and we can supplement that. So it’s a ‘drip big’ conversation with our children, right through yeah. I love it.
Simon O’Connor: You’ve got me reminiscing about my teddy bear. I will not regale you with that, but I just love it because yes, we all pretty much had, and some of us probably still do, not me, our teddy bears.
I just think that’s a marvellous, and I’m not just saying this because we’re talking here, I just think it’s a marvellous lens to, to start with and happy to say that.
Judith Cairns: It’s always trying to think how can we connect with what young people, with what children understand at their stage. So our programs are designed to be age appropriate.
So it’s starting from that base of where will they connect, allowing them to identify with what we’re talking about and what that means. We have some good fun writing our programs and making sure they’re relevant.
Simon O’Connor: I think it’s quite refreshing to hear, as you say, you are trying to start from the perspective of the child, whether they’re five or eight, 13 or 15. Some of the debates here, and we’re not going to go into it, but it’s often about the projection of adults onto the children.
Where’s the kid at? Where’s the child at? And let’s grab them there. And again, listening to you, it seems quite deliberate. You’ve started with the child and their preciousness, their dignity. I think that’s probably going to be a big part of their relationships. And then once you’ve, and again, correct me on this, once you’ve engaged those topics, then you’ve got actually a much more fruitful, which is probably a terrible pun, but a fruitful space to talk about sex and sexual relationships.
Judith Cairns: Definitely what we want to do is encourage them to consider what strong, healthy relationships look like, so that if they see something that isn’t, that they recognize it. But we do want to equip them to handle their emotions. So like in the program for our six to eight year olds, we do start to deal with those managing their emotions and managing challenging like anger and frustration and all of that, helping them understand that. And we also do a little exercise in there about appropriate and inappropriate touch at six to eight year olds. Again, helping them understand who they can trust and what is appropriate for them in the various contexts we find ourselves in.
It’s not that we don’t go there with some of the sensitive stuff but it’s doing that in a age appropriate way. That’s the thing, I know people hear we’re Love for Life. We deliver relationships and sexuality, education, and there is then a panic over what we’re going be talking about with a four old.
And there’s definitely views of thought that would have those four and five year olds learning a lot more than we will be engaging with. But I believe what we are doing is really important for young people to hear. It is foundational and I would say any parent who would sit in a program that we are delivering, if they want to go further, they can do that.
But what we are covering, I would say [parents] would be delighted with. In that early stage, that starts to build that foundation and encourage young people, to start to think that way and encourages them to do that.
Simon O’Connor: I picked up early in the conversation again, relationships.
Again, it’s no surprise we’re talking about RSE here, but you’ve constantly come back to that notion of relationship and mentioned very early on the place of parents. Again, it’s debated here in New Zealand at times of how close a parent should be to these discussions or not.
But it sounds that a key part of your program is that relationship not only with your program to the parents, but also making sure that the parents are aware of what’s happening with their children.
Judith Cairns: I think the ideal surely is that parents would be involved but not interfering as such, in that we want parents to feel that what their children are getting taught in school is helpful, constructive, all of that.
There shouldn’t be any fear or threat. And as a parent, I know when my children have been in still learning about stuff that I might not agree with. We create an opportunity and have created opportunities to have discussions. And actually, if anything, as a Christian parent, I find those conversations to be so helpful.
But as an organisation, we are really keen to try and hold that place that is for all young people regardless of their faith, regardless of their background. But it is encouraging them whatever their value base is to consider how this information process and how they can take this and own this and then ultimately act on it in their relationship.
Parents, the idea is that they would be involved. Of course, parents here, parents can withdraw their children up to Year 12. They can be withdrawn from programs. Very few parents do that. But it can happen ad that can be for a number of reasons. But it rarely happens. And I guess, our whole approach is partnership.
So we want parents to understand our website is full of information to equip them to continue the conversation. We want them to understand what’s in our program. We want to equip them to have the conversations, but we want them to be informed as to what we’re covering as well,
Simon O’Connor: this is only a general comment or reflection from down here where parents are withdrawing their children from the New Zealand RSE programs is more often than not because they’re shocked when they find out what’s being taught.
In other words, there isn’t that transparency when there’s engagement and discussion when the schools are talking to parents, and I’m a step-parent to five when they are talking about what’s in the programs as a parent, you feel empowered and trusting. So again, probably a long reflection of when that’s not happening.
That’s usually the cause of people being pulled out.
Judith Cairns: The delay, I would say as well, when I first started working with Love for Life, so that’s 14 and a half years ago, the curriculum here in Northern Ireland has changed a lot since I was at school. I know I don’t look that old, but it’s changed a lot since I was at school. I’m going to hold onto the fact that I might not look that old and don’t burst my bubble.
It had changed a lot and in a really positive way. RSE is on the curriculum and it is more than just the scientific explanation of reproduction. It is that holistic approach. There is very much an expectation that young people would understand so much more. And I have to say initially I like my goodness, again, when I walked through this with our children, you feel like you’re starting to have the conversations about relationships and sexuality around, specifically sexual relationships.
Around that stage of puberty and understanding the place of sex within those, within relationships in the future, it feels like you’re having that conversation at age 10, 11 specifically around sex. And then within a couple of years you’re talking about sexually transmitted infections.
And it’s oh my goodness, this feels like a big jump. And yet and it is a big jump. To go from here is sex and it is a beautiful, wonderful gift that we need to respect, value, and understand and, through to here are the consequences of having sex and why we need to be really clear what the consequences are.
There’s so much to discuss as Christians, doesn’t it, in our homes. But it’s not not about instilling fear, it’s about understanding in a Christian setting why God places boundaries. It’s actually for our protection. So I would say there’s. There’s a tremendous opportunity for Christians to explore further what is being talked about and actually use that to bring that conversation into the home.
Alongside that, my concern would be, and we work very hard, we are not promoting only what Christians believe. As such, in a school setting, we’re not teaching what fully, openly, what Christians believe. All of our programs are underpinned by our Christian views. We’re very clear about that, but we are not saying you should not from a Christian perspective.
And equally, I would be advocating if another agency who came in with a different worldview was there in a school. I would be saying that neither should they in that it is a space for young people to consider. An approach to RSE, an approach to the choices they might make in relationships. But while we are affirming their value, they’re worth, we’re affirming that they can make great choices.
We’re affirming things like consent and boundaries and all of that. We are not affirming a worldview. And so I just think there, there can be a subtlety there that we could challenge and we can encourage in our schools to make sure that space is.
Simon O’Connor: For what it’s worth from someone speaking here, from down under, I think it’s perfectly possible and appropriate to, as you say, put down a foundation from which you can discuss relationships, sex, sexuality, and everything else, which can, in this case come from more of a Christian perspective, but without enforcing a particular worldview.
And I’d add to that as, as well, there’s no neutral space here. You know there’s always going to be people with generally, I was going say with different foundations, but I think, most traditions, religious or not would start with the respect of the individual, the person importance of relating.
So there should be a lot of, says me to you, a lot of crossover there. But as I just keep returning to, I love the idea that you start with relationship and that sex in particular isn’t just this separate act. It’s relational by its nature.
Judith Cairns: And that is what we believe and that is can be countercultural, so it’s actually trying to hold on to that. And we want to understand that relationships matter. Relationships are key. And again, we come back to, we want to give young people that space to consider the choices that they might make. And I mean our programs, we go in, we deliver them to a year group, they’re very much presentation style, they’re highly engaging.
But we also have created lesson plans for teachers then to pick up some of the themes that we talk through so that there can be more depth and more specific. Conversations can happen in the context of the classroom, where teachers can pick that up and get into more depth than that too.
Simon O’Connor: Again, it doesn’t surprise me partly from what we’ve been discussing. Obviously I’ve looked at your website. Again, that’s all relational. So it’s not just simply going and telling children this is what it is. It’s the child to their teacher, the teacher to the person who’s presenting, the presenter to the child, to the parent or carer, as you’ve indicated as well – you engage wider than just the school.
So there’s a wonderful web, if you will, of these relationships. I noticed you, you talk a lot about the various approaches and there’s quite a number and we’ve touched on human dignity and I think most people would understand what that is, but one of your first ones was around a whole personal approach, and I just wondered if you wanted to tease that out by what you mean by a whole person approach.
Judith Cairns: Yeah, I guess we recognise in relationships and as we talk about relationships and sexuality, that we are talking about their health and their wellbeing as well as, any relationships that they might find themselves in. So with that in mind, we will consider how young people will develop that social, the cultural, the intellectual, embracing all aspects of their holistic.
View that whole person and giving them the space to think through how they might make decisions. And how it fits into all aspects of their lives. So relationships and sexuality is not in a little box over here. And quite often what we have found is people will talk about, relationships and sexuality should be scientifically accurate and it is not.
It is and should be taught in a neutral way. You mentioned that word neutral and it, but this impacts all of us. It impacts our whole being. Therefore, it can’t sit in a little box of science while it needs to be scientifically accurate. I absolutely agree with that. It is not a factual subject of here is what happens.
Here are the facts. It is so embraced in our values and that whole idea. Of that personal development, that whole person, that it impacts all of who we are. Then that is why our programs are structured and that way our approach to this starts to touch on those questions. So let me read you some of them, like in our programs, we encourage reflection on questions such as who am I? Who do I aspire to? I love that question. Let’s give young people the opportunity to consider their vision for their relationships and their future. Who do I aspire to be? What relationships do I aspire to have?
Therefore, how do I behave and what choices do I make? Let’s give them opportunities to think of their vision for their relationships. So what do I aspire to and how then shall I live? And it’s that opportunity culture does not present us with quite often and so we want them to think those things through and that vision for all of us as we try and seek to find common ground, even with organisations that hold different worldviews. It’s let’s give young people a great vision for their relationships.
Let’s give them an opportunity to think of what that might be. And in their uniqueness, their visions will be unique, but let’s give them the space to consider what that might be in the questions they might ask. And even around that whole person, it includes as our approach, say, developing personal attributes and values such as.
Integrity, kindness, generosity, trustworthiness, love, compassion, empathy, courage, humility, self-control, and a sense of justice. Those culture needs, this and abundance, and those are things and qualities that we believe enable individuals to live well and to flourish. And that is, ultimately our vision is that young people would value themselves, relationships, and sex.
In a thriving society we believe teaching this whole person these qualities starts to feed into a wider cultural societal picture that will encourage a flourishing together of relationships of all kind. Ultimately, it’s a massive vision.
Simon O’Connor: It’s exceptionally inspiring and please don’t take that as me saying this because I’m talking with you right here. I just think it is it’s a wonderfully integrated approach because as sexual beings, which we are, that sexualness is not just simply directed towards an act, it’s actually something which, to use another word you’ve used, helps society flourish.
It drives everything from our emotions to our mental wellbeing. Obviously our relationships. It’s a powerful part of who we and it relates more than just simply an act. So I do love that whole person concept. And I noticed as well, you talk on the website amongst other approaches also of trying to encourage, not tell, but tell encourage young people to be, a bit weary that my word here around rushing into sexual relationships and again.
As I noted it here, you wrote, sexual health is more than just an absence of an unplanned pregnancy or an STI, but is concerned with what you just talked about, the physical, the emotional, the mental, the spiritual and social wellbeing. So you are constantly placing relationships and sexuality in a much wider context.
Judith Cairns: And we want to keep widening the conversation. It’s so much more than, it’s so much more than fill in the blank. And I don’t know whether these terms would exist, and I’m sure they do, but there’d be ‘abstinence based RSE’. Then you would have ‘abstinence plus RSE’, which would be, you teach abstinence, but you recognise that young people might need to know about contraception in the future.
And that’s where we quite often have been put in an abstinence box because as an organisation that’s, our belief is that sex is for marriage. However, I’ve already explained, we do not teach that. While we totally want, promote that, we do say in our program that some young people may choose to wait until they’re married.
And let’s talk about the reasons for that. And this can be, this is a healthy decision. But, we’re absolutely promoting that and recognising that, but we’re also recognising that not all young people will choose that. But the bottom line is that we are prioritising delaying sex.
So where there would be abstinence based education, we would not put ourselves in that box. We are not saying you need to be abstinent. We are saying let’s pause, let’s delay even until marriage, and we would not want any young person in the room to feel shame if they were sexually active.
We want to understand different young people make different decisions, but let’s understand our boundaries and how we’re coming to those. Decisions. I’ll give you an example. We do a really, I think it’s a fantastic illustration in the room with the young people, where we’ll draw an imaginary line down the middle of the room and we explain, on this side of the room are all the people who might want to have sex with you in your lifetime.
And on this side of the room are those who deserve to. And we ask, which side has more. Now there’s usually a bit of fun in that, we try and create lightness while holding onto the precious value and worth of sex, right? But we’re trying to create an atmosphere of engagement. So you’ll usually get a few comments, oh, there’s nobody on that side of the room for him.
But anyway, so it’s the difference between wanting to and observing to, and then we ask the question. What is going to move someone from wanting to have sex with you to deserving tea? What are you, what decisions, what boundaries are you putting in place that moves someone from, they want to because is that enough?
You have a choice to make here and you have a response. So what’s going to move them from wanting two to deserving to? And we give some examples, oh, you’ve been with each other for a year, or you go away on holiday, or they buy you nice gifts, or they marry you. And that is, that’s a real pin drop moment in our programs where young people get that distinction of just because someone wants to, doesn’t mean they deserve to, and that is okay.
And that empowerment of what. Again, back to that vision. What is my vision of my relationships and where sex fits in those now, or in the future? And it’s just a gorgeous moment of that delay. Let’s pause, let’s stop, let’s think. And you do not need to be in any hurry to be sexually active.
Our stats show that teenagers, they’re not sexual. Culture would lead them to believe that lots of them at 15 and 16 are already sexually active. And we ask in our surveys and our evaluation surveys for feedback about our programs, but also about attitudes and behaviours from the young people.
And it’s that 16 to 17% of fifteen year olds are sexually active, which is still, it’s one in seven. 15 year olds are sexually active below the age of consent. However, when you ask young people, they think it is way higher than that. So actually they’re surprised and we need to let young people have that information and to empower them to know that it’s not just them who’s not having sex, actually loads of their peers aren’t having sex.
And I would not want any young person becoming sexually active because they think other people are, especially when they’re not. But you don’t want that to be the reason. So you know, you’re using that data and that information to encourage them to. To delay and encourage them to pause and think. And I sadly in some ways recognise that may be delay until next week.
It may be delay until I’m older. It may be until I get married. And I just, in any of our programs I come back to, I would want all young people to be seen in our programs, to be, feel that it is for them. And ultimately I want all young people to know they are valuable regardless of the decisions they are making.
That’s the foundation. And so I just think, oh, what an opportunity to reinforce that in a young person’s life as they navigate these times and these decisions. I.
Simon O’Connor: I was struck firstly, as an observation, New Zealand, and I don’t have the exact figures with me, Judith, but New Zealand has seen a very similar trend in that our younger ones are less sexually active.
They’re actually not smoking or vaping as much, and they’re not drinking as much and yet culture, media, and others are portraying that everyone, everywhere, every time where actually that’s not what the stats are showing. But again, as you’ve spoken I’m just struck by, and I say this in the best of ways, the simplicity of what you are doing is really just starting with a dignity of every person that little, child with a teddy bear that looks into that container and seen, and now you have to excuse my accent, sees their face in the mirror. Strike me as how the whole thing operates that actually when these young people are reaching that sexually active stage to ask, is this what I want? Is this my vision of myself?
Is this the nature of relationship? Is this the human dignity that I’m being granted and gifted? And I just think it’s, again, so empowering.
Judith Cairns: And it is and I look back at my own teenage years and just think, what was my vision? For my relationships and where was I given that space?
And that’s to consider what it was, and I just think, we, oh, aren’t we all driven so much by our feelings like we are. And we can be governed by our feelings if we don’t make decisions not to be. But actually having people to talk that through with and to understand if this is my vision for my future, for my life, for my relationships, this then is how I will live and what I will do, and how I’ll, I will protect that vision.
Where feelings matter, they do. It is actually, there are things we all agree on that even if we feel like, if I feel angry, if I feel like I want to hit you, it’s not good for me to do that. We all agree on that. There are things where we agree. Feelings do not trump and so we need to be finding, again, those common messages of actually feelings aren’t everything, and acting on our feelings aren’t everything.
If even taking that topic, a really important topic of consent. If I’m with someone, they might feel that they really strongly want sex with me. But I don’t with them. Therefore, they can’t. I’m not the one who, and that person who feels they want to do something, can’t and shouldn’t.
And so it’s just trying to uphold those messages. And see them take root in lives. And just the powerful, I agree with you. I think on one hand this message is incredibly simple and so basic, and it is so complex. It’s that both we have lost and I just wonder, is that a deliberate.
Relationships matter and this area is huge. And the more complex, if I was wanting to destroy it, I would make it really complex and really complicated and make people really frightened about engaging with it and scared of saying the wrong thing and not wanting to offend. And with the result of it comes this vacuum.
Whereas actually, what do I want to share? What can I share? What can I bring? What do I want to communicate to my child or my pupil in school? What are those basic principles that, oh my goodness, if we could enforce and reinforce and keep encouraging young people and showing them that dignity and showing them their choices.
Have consequences and can be beautiful choices. How different, like what would our society look like if we started to do that really and step forward into it, it could transform things.
Simon O’Connor: It sounds like you’re making transformation there in Northern Ireland.
And actually, look, there’s a thousand more questions that I could ask, but one, I’m conscious of your time, but also I think you’ve actually summarised not only what you’re doing, but the hope, the vision, and the intention that this is a nice place to, to wrap it up. But I’m inspired by.
What you are doing and just grateful that you’ve shared just a bit with us down here in, in New Zealand, and I hope that it inspires us as, as well. If people want to find out a little bit more about your work, is there a website or the like they can go to,
Judith Cairns: So our website is Loveforlife.org.uk and it’ll have lots of information about us, about our approach and about our programs.
Judith Cairns: Back to that individual young person. As we go into the schools, we are asking them, to give us feedback at the end so we can think what we’re doing is working. But actually it’s really important for us to hear from young people.Just to share, 81% of the young people and this is based on thousands of young people, you’re talking 47,000 young people received a program. So 81% agree that it was helpful. Feel that they will make healthy choices in the future, even if their friends are making different choices. And primary school, post primary teachers, a hundred percent would recommend our programs.
But the one thing I wanted to highlight at the end is at the end of the questionnaire and survey, we ask young people, what’s the one thing – so this is them sitting, literally writing their little evaluation survey – what’s the one thing that you will take away from this program that you want to remember? And just to share, so these are some examples of the thousands that we received.
So let me just read them. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” “That I have value and should be respected.” “My past decisions don’t define me.” “That I am more than my appearance.” “Communication is key in a relationship.” “Everyone is unique and has a choice” and I just love that in the middle of all the information that we cover, and believe me, there’s lots, all around contraception, STIs, all that stuff, that actually young people, the one thing they want to remember, it comes back to that core message, the big subject that they take away that appears most often is consent. That area of consent, but that area of respect, value, and worth, comes through time and time again, and their comments inspire me and break my heart at times that actually it comes back to that simple message of, oh my goodness, young people hearing that and understanding that and taking that away that is impact.
That’s what in the morning to do my job,
Simon O’Connor: I just think as you read those out the word that I had in my mind was, it’s transformative not just for those young people, but their future relationships and for the culture. Again, I think it’s just exceptionally inspiring what you are doing and Judith, I’m just so grateful that you’ve made the time that this little request from a Kiwi out of the blue but exceptionally grateful for you.
She just a little bit of that and I just hope because I just love your teddy bear analogy that you know, listeners will, if you will, figuratively because most of them will be adults. We’ll just have a look at the bottom of their biscuit tin in the mirror and just see that the value in themselves and then impart that onto their own children and families. So look, thank you just so much for being part of the show.
Judith Cairns: Thank you. Thanks so much.
