ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

Advocates for Youth to Host Training for Online Peer Educators

WASHINGTON, DC (November 27, 2001) Advocates for Youth will host an all-day training session for youth on December 1, 2001, at the Wyndham Hotel in Washington, DC.

These youth will learn the skills necessary to act as peer educators on a variety of sexual health topics, including prevention of and living with HIV/AIDS and other STDs and issues of human sexuality.

Participants in this training will be preparing for their roles as peer educators for Advocates for Youth on the Web sites YouthResource, a dynamic site for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth which now boasts over 100,000 visitors per month, and MySistahs, created by and for young women of color to offer holistic, culturally appropriate sexual health information.

"I'm taking advantage of another opportunity to make a positive difference in the life of someone else," said a 17-year-old North Carolina native planning to attend the conference. "I see this as a chance to receive additional training that will help me be more effective in responding to the concerns of my peers."

"Every hour of every day, two American young people contract HIV, 96 become pregnant, and nearly 350 more contract a sexually transmitted infection," said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. "By empowering young people to help themselves, this training will help protect their health and perhaps save lives."

This training is to be held prior to Advocates for Youth's 20th Anniversary Conference, Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^®: A New Paradigm for Healthy Adolescent Sexuality, December 2-4, 2001, also in Washington, DC. This three-day learning opportunity will challenge youth-serving professionals, sexuality educators, policy makers, health care providers, and youth themselves to examine current adolescent reproductive and sexual health policy and practice and to embrace a new paradigm—one that affirms adolescent sexual development as normal and healthy.

Advocates for Youth is an international, nonprofit organization that works in the U.S. and the developing world to create programs and support policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.

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Note to Editors and Producers: For more information or to set up an interview with adolescent sexuality experts, please contact Bill Barker at (202) 419-3420.

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