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#Blessers Must Fall: Youth-led participatory action research and photo story creation on teenage pregnancy, transactional sex and gender-based violence

abstract The aim of this briefing article is to investigate the use of visual methods in youth-led participatory action research and their potential in exploring resilience-enabling factors in the context of gender inequality that gives rise to the prevalence of sexual violence, teen pregnancy and the ‘blesser’ phenomenon. This study makes audible the voices of 20 adolescent volunteers at a public school situated in a low-income high-density district close to central Durban in KwaZulu-Natal. Although gender was not part of the criteria for selection, the majority of the volunteers were female and three were male. All were aged between 14 and 17, African and spoke isiZulu. In contrast to studies that select a focus prior to commencement, this programme supported participants to use their agency in determining their own agenda. Through a process of participatory action research they identified social issues they felt were critical to their context, namely sexual violence, teen pregnancy and ‘blessers’. The participants drew community maps to identify physical challenges and problems in their communities, conducted community surveys, created an intervention using visual participatory methodologies and performed drama and poetry on the gender issues that they identified. This study, with its participatory approach, contributes to our understanding of how resilience can be co-constructed and the role young people have in advocating for change and transforming the social ecology in which they are stakeholders to become more gender sensitive.