Back in 2004, the Young Person’s Sexual Health Outreach Team for Liverpool and Sefton approached Youth Media with an idea for a website. After seeing some earlier work that Youth Media had done involving virtual on-screen characters the NHS team realised that this could be an excellent way to communicate the importance of sexual health to young people in and around Liverpool.

The team asked us to build a website called So To Speak that used virtual characters in the form of contraception and STI’s, with the main character being a talking condom. The condom, now known as Jonny became the main mascot for the site, and delivers information to the user on most of the site’s pages. Jonny is also interactive, allowing the person to change his colours and move his eyes whilst he delivers the relevant information. The look of Jonny also changes from page to page to fit with the subject that he is talking about.

The main aim of the site is to deliver information about sexual health in privacy to young people who may find it too embarrassing to ask another person. The site holds information about contraception, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, relationships, puberty and the laws surrounding sex.

Now, just over 2 years after the site’s original launch in November 2004, the site has been given a complete overhaul and now sports both Flash and HTML portals for maximum accessibility and compatibility.  Youth Media have brought the site right up to date with a brand new look and feel and up to the minute information on Sexual Health and related issues such as Sexually Transmitted Infections, contraceptive methods, pregnancy, relationships, puberty, and sex & the law amongst Young People.

 A major feature of the site is the sign posting service. This service can guide a person to help provided elsewhere, whether it be a local service, a doctor or an information source such as another website. The sign post service contains information for the majority of sexual health services, drink and drugs services, help lines and counselling services within Liverpool and Sefton as well as national directories, websites and help lines.