I am Nikola Brkljač (26) from Belgrade. I was born in Pančevo, where I lived until I finished high school, after which I moved to Belgrade. I am currently a senior student at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, and in parallel, I work in communications and manage the social media for Belgrade Pride, after leaving the position of coordinator at the Pride Info Center. My first experiences with activism and human rights issues came as a teenager through my involvement in KOMPAS, the Creative Youth Center of Pančevo, for the fight against AIDS. My work at KOMPAS was focused on creating a peer education program on HIV and AIDS prevention, as well as anti-discriminatory policies toward people living with HIV. The program was carried out in seven high schools and four primary schools in Pančevo. The goal of the program was to train peer educators on these topics, who would later conduct workshops with their peers in schools, introducing young people to safe sexual practices, but also providing insight into issues historically connected to HIV, which young people encounter for the first time in their formal educational environments. These include topics such as the LGBTIQ+ community, queer and trans rights, the rights of sex workers, and the de-tabooization of the role of nationality and skin color in the context of HIV. I believe that the lack of education on reproductive and sexual health in the formal school system leads to risky behavior and the cultivation of values that further marginalize already disadvantaged groups. Through this program, I want to work with education representatives, young people, and employees at the Public Health Institute of Pančevo to formalize and improve the peer education program and to officially introduce reproductive health issues into formal education.
