Mackenzie is a member of the Texas Youth Leadership Council.

As a country, and particularly as a state, our teen pregnancy and teen STD rates are devastatingly high and though a statistic may seem empty, it is impossible to ignore the friends and classmates who fall into these statistics.  Pregnancy and STDs should not be part of being a teenager, and nobody should have to deal with any of the detrimental effects that all too often follow.  Many teens have sex, it’s no secret, what we need to do is stop denying it and take responsibility for the sexual health of our youth.  Instead of insisting that abstinence-only programs work, it’s time to get real, with real sex education.  This is my passion, my dedication, and my goal.  I believe that with proper education, open attitudes, and easily accessible contraception, we can solve teen pregnancy and STDs. 

My name is Mackenzie, I’m 17, and a high school senior.  Both of my parents support me completely with all of my passions and I have been very fortunate to have such a great down-to-earth family.  My mother worked at Planned Parenthood for twenty years and I began volunteering there, at the young age of 10.  My parents were always very open with me concerning sex, and of course being a girl in a public school, my friends were also very open.  At a very young age I developed a reputation as a sex-ed girl, I was the one who my friends came to with questions about condoms, birth control, or just sex.  It is a scary time when the best source of information is a friend. Most high school students are not as well trained as I was about sexual health, and as a result, many teens make bad decisions without even knowing the consequences.  My goal is to get out medically-accurate, comprehensive information, without bias.

I work with three organizations, teenREACH, Young Leaders Council for the Federation of Planned Parenthood, and Brazos Abiertos.  TeenREACH (Real Education and Advocacy Change Health), is an organization that four friends and I founded in association with Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas.  We work to educate our peers on sexual health issues. We also approach sex education through politics by petitioning and lobbying Texas representatives.  The Young Leaders Council for the Federation of Planned Parenthood (YLC) is a group of 50 teens from around the country who organize local advocacy events coordinated on a national scale. Brazos Abiertos (open arms) is an organization committed to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Yucatan of Mexico.  I travel down to the Yucatan with other bilingual peer educators to teach workshops to the teens in Mayan villages.  All of these organizations center on my passion for real sex education, and allow me different points of view as well as new experience.  I hope that this council will do the same, and I am very excited to get to work!