ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

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Advocates for Youth's Top Ten
Recent Accomplishments

December 2005

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Advocates launched the Safe Spaces Initiative— assisting community-based agencies to better serve GLBTQ youth

This year, Advocates’ efforts to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (GLBTQ) youth took a giant leap forward. Advocates continued to strengthen its Web site by and for GLBTQ youth, www.youthresource.com, reaching more than one million young people with sexual health information, community-based referrals, peer counseling, and community support. In addition, in partnership with the Girl’s Best Friend Foundation, Advocates launched the Safe Spaces Initiative. This innovative and exciting initiative is designed to assist community-based agencies to address the needs of GLBTQ youth and combat discrimination among program participants. Through the Safe Spaces Initiative, Advocates will provide agencies with information, training, and other tools to assist them in making their programs safe and welcoming for GLBTQ youth. The toolkit has recently become available online, and Advocates will work in the coming months to train its youth activists to assist organizations in their own communities to adapt and use the resource.

Advocates’ electronic education and advocacy campaigns reached 130,000 youth, empowering 50,000 young people to advocate in support of comprehensive sex education and adolescent access to emergency contraception

In 2004, Advocates created an innovative electronic advocacy and education campaign regarding emergency contraception (EC). The campaign included youth-friendly information about EC, explored issues such as safety, access, and use, and provided young people with opportunities to contact the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in support of young women’s access to EC without a prescription. Advocates’ My Voice Counts! EC Campaign (now the Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^® EC Campaign) augmented the organization’s My Voice Counts! Sex Education Campaign (now the Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^® Keep it REAL Campaign). Together these campaigns have reached well over 130,000 young people across the United States. Fifty thousand youth have signed petitions in support of sex education and/or youth access to EC, and approximately 5,000 have written letters to Congress or the President asking them to support young people’s rights to sexual health information and services.

Advocates’ Media Project initiated Take P.A.R.T.—a campaign to bolster the placement of accurate sexual health information in popular television programminG

Recognizing the power of television to educate as it entertains, Advocates’ Media Project added Take Positive Action for Responsible Television (Take P.A.R.T) to its long list of services aimed at bolstering responsible sexual health information and images on popular television programs. Through Take P.A.R.T., staff identify shows that have incorporated honest, accurate sexual health information into their programming and then send out a monthly e-mail alert to 30,000 Americans, asking them to demonstrate their support for these programs’ efforts. Take P.A.R.T. has generated thousands of letters to television networks and to the Federal Communications Commission applauding the efforts of programs that use the power of entertainment media to educate viewers about sexual health issues.

Advocates assisted parents in local communities to successfully advocate for comprehensive sex education for young people

Advocates continued its work with local and state organizations, assisting groups in South Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington State, and Oregon in efforts to build parents’ skills as activists for honest sex education. For example, over the past five years, Advocates has assisted Planned Parenthood Health Services of Southwest Oregon (PPHSSO) in its efforts to roll out the first statewide Rights.Respect.Responsibility.® Campaign and build support for comprehensive sex education. Over the past two years, Advocates has worked with PPHSSO to augment its parent-child communication training with sessions that teach parents the skills they need to act as advocates for comprehensive sex education. This year, mobilizing parents, clergy, and health care professionals, PPHSSO successfully advocated for changes to sex education programs and/or policies in Eugene, Medford, and Grants Pass. These programs will reach almost 40,000 youth.

Members of Advocates’ Young Women of Color Leadership Council secured positions with 20 state and local HIV decision making bodieS

Advocates’ Young Women of Color Leadership Council (YWOC) trains and supports young women leaders working in local communities on issues that are critical to African-American and Latino teens, particularly the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The leadership roles played by young women activists of color not only build the civic engagement of their peers but also build the participants’ own sense of power and prepare them for future leadership roles. Founded in 2002, YWOC has three goals: 1) to raise awareness among young women of color about the need for HIV prevention efforts (educate); 2) to advocate for the inclusion of young women of color in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of HIV prevention policies and programs (include); and 3) to empower additional young women of color to get involved in sexual health education efforts (empower).

During its first 18 months, YWOC members reached over 5,400 peers and 1,000 youth-serving professionals about the impact of HIV/AIDS on young women of color and the importance of involving young women in the design, delivery, and evaluation of prevention programs. Members also secured seats on 20 HIV decision making bodies, including HIV community planning groups in five states and the board of directors and advisory committees for the CityKids Foundation in New York City, the LifeLong AIDS Alliance in Seattle, WA; and the National Organization of Concerned Black Men in Washington, DC, among others. Together, these policy-making bodies affect the allocation of HIV prevention resources to more than one million youth.

Advocates for Youth mobilized parents, teen, and communities of faith in support of the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act

Advocates worked in coalition with other reproductive rights organizations to reintroduce the Family Life Education Act in Congress. In February 2005, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) re-introduced legislation, renamed the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act, with 68 co-sponsors in the House and five in the Senate, including one Republican senator. For the press conference announcing the bill’s introduction, Advocates organized 10 teams of parents and their children to stand up in support of the bill.

To further support the legislation, Advocates collaborated with the Unitarian Universalist Association to organize a faith-based lobby day for their young members. Advocates coordinated a three-day training for 30 youth activists and helped set up and debrief meetings with 40 Capitol Hill legislators. Staff also organized a viewing of the movie “The Education of Shelby Knox” about a young Christian activist who lobbied for comprehensive sex education in her school district. Advocates arranged for Shelby to attend the viewing, answer questions, and participate in the lobby day.

Advocates helped the Massachusetts Department of Health to enact a requirement that state-funded teen pregnancy prevention programs be science-based

Since 2002, through a CDC Cooperative Agreement, Advocates has assisted five key state-based teen pregnancy prevention coalitions (AZ, MA, MN, NC, and SC) to strengthen their organizations and in turn increase their capacity to promote science-based teen pregnancy prevention programs and policies. To this end, Advocates completed an extensive needs assessment of each coalition; provided each with hundreds of hours of technical assistance; conducted 20 intensive, capacity-building trainings; disseminated 3,500 copies of science-based practices publications; and sponsored two leadership roundtables on science-based practices.

Evaluation of this work indicates that the coalitions have all strengthened their board structure, fund-raising efforts, and commitment to promoting science-based prevention strategies. These improvements have contributed to real, on-the-ground successes. For example, the Massachusetts coalition successfully moved for the state’s department of health to require that all state-funded teen pregnancy prevention programs be based on scientifically evaluated models.

Advocates for Youth partnered with the UNFPA to build youth activists’ skills in Egypt, Bosnia, and the Caribbean region

In 2003, a group of 38 youth ages 15 to 26 from 27 countries founded Global Youth Partners (GYP). The initiative, which is youth-driven with support from UNFPA, rallies partners and stakeholders to increase investment and strengthen commitments for preventing HIV infections among young people, especially under-served youth. In 2004, Advocates and UNFPA conducted advocacy training institutes for GYP members in Egypt, Bosnia, and the Caribbean. As a result, teams in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, and Panama are implementing advocacy plans. For example:

• The Dominican Republic’s team is working to increase the percentage of city-level budgets allocated to HIV prevention for young people. To achieve this, GYP members are meeting with local officials to educate them about the importance of investing in youth and HIV prevention.
• In Egypt, GYP members are advocating for the replication of school based “Anti-AIDS Clubs” that provide information and services on HIV prevention to students. The model was successfully piloted in Alexandria, Egypt, and the GYP team is advocating for the expansion of this successful model to secondary schools in a region north of Cairo.
• GYP members in Panama are advocating for increased youth participation on governmental bodies. Their goal is to get youth placed on the National Commission for Sexual and Reproductive Health, its five sub-commissions, and in pilot health centers to advocate for increased resources for youth and for the adequate provision of sexual and reproductive health services, with an emphasis on HIV prevention directed to vulnerable youth.

Advocates launched efforts to assist young adult activists to stay in the sexual and reproductive health field

Advocates has long believed in the power of youth activism and youth-adult partnerships. Over the past year, Advocates’ Youth Activist Network has grown to more than 15,000 members. In 2004, Advocates directly trained 500 youth activists across the world, assisting them to build their advocacy skills. This year, Advocates’ young activists lobbied for sexual health legislation in state capitals such as Chicago, Olympia, and St. Paul, and actively participated in high-level sessions of the Global Health Assembly (Geneva), the World AIDS Conference
(Bangkok), and the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (New York). Thirteen of Advocates’ activists traveled to Brussels to assist European youth in designing advocacy plans to thwart far-right efforts against youth’s reproductive rights in Europe. In a new project, Advocates’ staff began drafting essays to assist young women of color to enter and stay in the reproductive rights and health field. The essays, based on staff’s own experiences within the field, will serve as the foundation for a speaking tour of historically black colleges and universities that Advocates will conduct with the Pro Choice Education Project.

Finally, Advocates began to systematically track its youth activist alumni to better assess the impact of its youth empowerment efforts on the field. Advocates found that many activists had gone on to graduate school, attending schools such as Yale, Michigan, Tulane, and Johns Hopkins for advanced public health degrees. Others obtained employment in the reproductive and sexual health field. Advocates’ alumni were or are working at such organizations as the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals; the Campaign to End AIDS; Boys and Girls Clubs of America; Africa Action; and the Global Health Fund. Many have secured positions with state and local youth-serving agencies, including the Door (New York), Metro Teen AIDS (Washington, DC), and the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry. Four of Advocates’ staff are alumni of Advocates’ youth activist network, as are two of six youth on Advocates’ board. Advocates’ new Board chair interned at Advocates 12 years ago!

Advocates’ ideology vs. science framework became a mantra of the progressive movement

In 2001, Advocates began to frame the sex education debate in the larger context of an assault on public health science. Through the development and use of its "ideology vs. science" framework, Advocates has had significant success with the media in demonstrating that the obsession of social conservatives with abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is actually at the center of a major campaign of censorship and intimidation targeting government Web sites, programs, research, and grantees.

Advocates worked with colleagues such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and the National Education Association to expand the ideology vs. science message beyond the reproductive health field. These organizations educated their membership about the impact of conservatives in replacing science-based research and programs with ones that are ideologically driven. For example, in early 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report on the administration’s distortion of science, titled “Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation Into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science.” The report sparked a number of media articles and became the foundation for a full Senate Commerce Committee hearing on integrity of science.

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