This article highlights the needs of adolescent males as they go through a critical process of forming self-identity. A variety of educational approaches, community-based, school-based and peer education are described so as to inform young men about STDs and HIV/AIDS. Innovative strategies including social marketing, hotlines and radio call-in programmes; the internet and CD-ROMs and entertainment-education programmes that provide adolescent males the confidential, timely and anonymous counselling they tend to prefer are discussed. Also reviewed are the benefits of life-skills training, population education, family life education and sexuality education to teach young men the skills they need to negotiate healthy relationships, take responsibility for their lives, resist negative pressures and reduce their own vulnerability to infections and unintended pregnancies.