CHANGE MAKERS Episode 1 – Incorporating sex education in Costa Rica’s schools | Leonardo Garnier

Welcome to the first episode of Global Citizen: Change Makers. In this special subseries, we interview leaders from diverse walks of life who have worked to achieve big changes. Changes in different spheres, including individual communities, institutions, entire nations or at the global level. We talk to politicians, activists, leaders of international organizations and others about the most challenging decisions they have taken part in as they sought to transform the world around them.

Our guests share firsthand accounts of how they navigated the stormy waters of local, national and international politics in order to bring about change, often in the face of daunting challenges, including, in some cases, threats to their lives.

For our first episode, we interviewed Leonardo Garnier, former Minister of Education of Costa Rica. Leonardo told us about how he sought to turn Costa Rican schools into places of learning, not only of the skills needed to get a good job, but about how to live well, including how to love and to take pleasure in sex, responsibly. This was a radical change in a Catholic country where conservative and authoritarian views of education still prevailed. Leonardo faced vehement opposition, including numerous lawsuits brought before the Constitutional Court.

Our chat was a captivating exploration of how you take a transformative vision and turn it into tangible change through public policy, winning support from key actors and overcoming resistance both big and small. At the same time, it was also a reflection on the limits of policy and politics in sustaining such changes in the face of shifting political currents.

Thanks for tuning in!

The opinions expressed in this podcast by the host(s) and/or guest(s) do not in any way represent the official positions of FOGGS, katoikos.world, or any other affiliated organization.