In meetings in schools, topic-oriented parties and radio programmes, they warn young people about the dangers of promiscuous sex and the use of contraceptives. Instead, they advocate responsible sex based on Christian values.

Led by sociologists and anthropologists of the Divine World Catholic University of San Carlos, the 200 students have received training for months on human development, youth sexuality and pedagogy.

Sr Mercy Arellano, a clinical pastoral education teacher at St Luke’s Medical Hospital in Manila, told AsiaNews that the YC’s campaign offers an alternative to abortion and condoms. YC’s efforts are meant to help others become conscious of the risks of safe sex, and how it leads to irresponsible sex.

Young people must be helped to develop “healthy attitudes towards human sexuality as a gift of God for human procreation and psycho-human and spiritual intimacy in the context of sacrament of marriage as per Christian teachings,” Sr Arellano said.

A government-funded Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study (YAFSS) survey conducted in 2003 by a group experts at the University of the Philippines Population Institute, which included 20,000 respondents of both sexes from ages 15 to 27, found that more and more young people are engaging in premarital sex and that 49 per cent of the males and 11 per cent of the females surveyed had multiple sex partners. About 79 percent of those who had experienced their first sexual encounter admitted that they did not use contraceptives.

In the first ten months of 2009, 629 new AIDS cases were reported in the Philippines, which is more than for the whole of 2008.

Despite the growing number, the Philippines have one of the lowest levels of HIV-AIDS. By comparison in Thailand, where government and international organisations have conducted massive campaigns in favour of condom use, there were 610,000 AIDS cases (1 per cent of the population) and 31,000 deaths. In the same period, the Philippines reported 9,000 cases (0.1 per cent of the population and 308 deaths.