Want to speak to an expert on young people’s reproductive and sexual health and rights? Contact [email protected]

Youth Activism and Peer Education Programs

Abortion Access Initiatives

Advocates for Youth works with young people to ensure everyone has access to the abortion care they need, regardless of age, income, or where they live. 

• The Youth Abortion Support Collective (YouthASC) is a nationwide network of young people committed to being abortion access resources in their communities and supporting folks getting the care they need. 

• Youth Testify, a collaboration with We Testify, is a group of youth abortion storytellers working to build empathy, build youth power, and destigmatize abortion.

• Activists leading the Abortion On Campus project on their campuses host abortion speakouts, lead public education campaigns and work with campus, local, and state officials to strengthen young people’s access to abortion services.

Act Out

This national network consists of young people who are advocating for the rights of LGBTQ youth. Constant attacks on queer and trans youth at the state, local, and school board levels are not only endangering queer and trans youth, but they are also creating a sense of hopelessness as harmful policies are enacted before many people even know what’s being debated. Young people are the target of these laws, and they are energized and ready to fight back.

AMAZE Youth Ambassadors

AMAZE.org was founded because experts in various fields came together and identified a problem: young people have questions about their bodies and lives, but are often being met with silence and shame. With over 90 million views in the U.S. alone, AMAZE has published over 278 animated videos covering puberty, consent, sexual orientation, healthy relationships, and more—all with young viewers in mind.

AMAZE Youth Ambassadors are 30 young people ages 10-16 who advise Advocates for Youth staff crafting AMAZE scripts and video content to make sure they cover topics other young people are discussing, resonate with teens and tweens, and are being disseminated through channels young people actually use.

For more information on how to get involved with this youth advocate program, please contact [email protected]

The Busybodies Club

The Busybodies Club is a national long-term campaign to educate young people on sexual health and reproductive rights topics. This PSA-style campaign works to fight common misconceptions, eliminate confusion, and debunk sex education information.

Engaging Communities around HIV Organizing (ECHO)

ECHO is a program that supports young people living with HIV to become leaders in ending HIV stigma and criminalization. Focused on uplifting youth of color, especially Black and brown, Trans and Queer—ECHO members use social media, storytelling, and peer education to speak out on how HIV, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are connected. They push for youth voices to be included in decisions that impact their health. ECHO leaders also contribute to MyStoryOutLoud, a campaign that shares real stories from LGBTQ+ youth of color.

For more information contact [email protected]

CommuniTea

CommuniTea is a project with ViiVHealthcare to engage Black women and girls, of cis and trans experience,  in ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This collective of youth activists lead HIV advocacy on campus and in their communities, centering the experiences and raising awareness about the impact HIV/AIDS has on young Black women and girls.

The Condom Collective

The Condom Collective is a youth-led grassroots movement to normalize condom use on campuses across the nation. Each year, approximately 2,000 members, on more than 1,000 college campuses distribute one million Trojan ® Brand condoms, educate their peers about sexual health, and organize to improve contraceptive access on their campuses and in their communities. For more information contact [email protected]

Emergency Contraception Access Network (ECAN)

Members of the EC Access Network receive free emergency contraception to give out to students who need it now (or in the future!). 

Free the Pill Youth Council

The #FreeThePill Youth Council is a collaboration with Ibis Reproductive Health and is made up of youth activists from across the country to make over the counter birth control affordable and accessible.

Know Your IX

Know Your IX is a survivor- and youth-led project of Advocates for Youth that empowers students to end sexual and gender-based violence in their schools. Know Your IX activists  educate, train, organize, and support student survivors in their work to affect change in K-12 schools and colleges  across the country. Know Your IX also  advocates at the federal, state and local level for stronger Title IX processes and survivor-centered policy changes. For more information contact [email protected].

Muslim Youth Leadership Council (MyLC)

MyLC, a part of the Muslim Youth Project, is comprised of a cohort of Muslim young people from across the country, working together to challenge Islamaphobia in the U.S. These create safe and supportive spaces for LGBTQ Muslim youth, educate, mobilize, and amplify issues impacting their communities of young Muslim identifying people. MyLC advocates for the inclusion of young Muslim identifying people in Reproductive Justice programming and promotion of health and rights, and host the #MuslimAnd campaign. For more information contact [email protected]

National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD)

National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD), annually on April 10th, is a day to educate the public about the impact of HIV and AIDS on young people. The day also highlights the HIV prevention, treatment, and care campaigns of young people in the U.S. For more information, contact Armonte at [email protected]

Racial Justice in Sex Ed Youth Advisory Council

The Racial Justice in Sex Ed Youth Advisory Council (RJYAC) is a dynamic cohort of high school and college students of color dedicated to advocating for racial justice in K-12 sex education. RJYAC promotes racial equity in sexual health education and beyond to ensure that curricula are inclusive, accurate, and culturally responsive. For more information contact [email protected]

Student Organizers

Student Organizers are high school and college student leaders who serve as activists, advocates, and spokespeople at the local, state, and national level. With the support of Advocates for Youth, they lead issue-based campaigns for school, local, or state policy changes that support young people’s sexual health and rights. Some of their campaigns for change in their communities include organizing for free menstrual products, free condoms, gender neutral restrooms, and other issues in the fight for comprehensive sex education, contraceptive access, abortion access, LGBTQ health and rights, and HIV prevention. For more information contact [email protected]

YouthResource Leadership Program (YouthResource)

YouthResource Leadership Program is designed by and for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people of color. LGBTQ youth apply to the program and, if successful, attend a five-day intensive training institute to help them hone their advocacy and mobilization skills. YouthResource members then work throughout the year to advocate for improvements in policies and practices that impact LGBTQ youth of color, on college campuses and at the state and federal level. YouthResource members contribute to MyStoryOutLoud, a digital storytelling campaign dedicated to uplifting the narratives of LGBTQ+ youth of color nationwide. For more information, contact [email protected]

Young Womxn of Color 4 Reproductive Justice Collective (YWOC4RJ)

The YWOC Collective is a collective of 14-24 year old young women and nonbinary activists. As a member of the YWOC for Reproductive Justice Collective, you will get a monthly newsletter for feminists of color, have exclusive access to organizing webinars, trainings, leadership development opportunities, and campaigns to empower this group as a new generation of reproductive justice activists. For more information contact [email protected]

YWOC Leadership Council

YWOC members are leaders in their schools and communities. YWOC was founded in 2001 as a group for women of color, with the addition of nonbinary activists in 2020.  It was created because of the exclusion of people of color in feminist spaces overall – especially within leadership roles.  We are challenging cisheteropatriarchy – not just patriarchy – and this space is for both women and nonbinary folks and women working together to defeat our common enemies: reproductive oppression. We aim to create a strong intersectional movement for bodily autonomy, and work to build on what’s done by feminists of color before us to become stronger than ever and win real change for ourselves and our communities.

Youth Activist Alliances

Youth Activist Alliance Leaders are youth organizers who run local or state-level grassroots campaigns for change in youth sexual health and rights and reproductive justice, in Alabama, Minnesota, Nevada, and Texas. Reach out to [email protected] for more info.

Youth Activist Alumni Network

Advocates for Youth works to create a pipeline of youth leaders who bring skill, determination, and innovation to progressive movements. Thousands of young people have participated in Advocates programs and many are now leading their professions as educators, activists, health care professionals, lawyers, policy makers, parents, and much more.  Reach out to [email protected] for more information.

Reaching Youth Directly with Education Resources

AMAZE

Advocates for Youth is the lead partner on AMAZE, a YouTube channel and educational website filled with short, animated videos and other resources designed to provide adolescents around the globe with medically accurate, age-appropriate, affirming, and honest sex education they can access directly online—regardless of where they live or what school they attend. AMAZE has 300+ videos on topics such as contraception, menstruation, deciding when/if to have sex, building healthy relationships, mental health and anxiety, and more common topics around puberty.

AMAZE also strives to assist adults—parents, guardians, educators and health care providers around the globe—to communicate effectively and honestly about sex and sexuality with the children and adolescents in their lives.

AMAZE is free and always will be! From YouTube views, to classroom viewings, to direct downloads, we estimate more than 100 million young people have viewed AMAZE content around the world. You can send any questions (or suggestions!) to [email protected] 

AMAZE International

In addition to the United States project, AMAZE International works in partnership with organizations in every region of the world to develop, dub, or adapt AMAZE videos for adolescents as well as complementary educational resources for adolescents, parents, and teachers, including comics, games, lesson plans, and discussion guides, among others. AMAZE International partner organizations include in-country, regional and international NGOs, youth-led organizations and networks, UN agencies, and governments. Partner organizations lead on the adaptation, translation, and dissemination of AMAZE videos, leveraging resources and a variety of strategies to use, co-create, adapt, validate, disseminate and engage young people to suit country contexts and maximize access for all.  AMAZE International videos and complementary resources have been made available by its partners through social media, television, billboards, teacher training modules and lesson plans, peer education manuals, websites, digital platforms for teachers and young people, chatbots, apps, and more.

For more information about AMAZE International, contact:  [email protected]

Subscribe and follow AMAZE!
Join the 500,000+ people around the globe who have subscribed to our newsletter or followed one of our various YouTube Channels or social media accounts! Find all the relevant links on the project’s website here. 

Kikis With Louie

Kikis with louie is a video series created in partnership with LGBTQ young people to spark community, dialogue, and education around relationships, intimacy, consent, HIV, STDs, and advocacy. Hosted by award-winning storyteller and activist louie ortiz-fonseca, the show features engaging conversations with celebrities, athletes, influencers, LGBTQ icons, and youth from across the country. Watch on YouTube and join the conversation! For more information contact [email protected]

I Think I Might Be

Check out Advocates for Youth’s popular series of youth pamphlets called “I Think I MIght Be.” These resources are written by LGBTQ young people, and provide answers for young people thinking about their sexual orientation and young people who find that the gender they were assigned at birth does not fit them. 

Building the Capacity of Youth Serving Professionals

Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health Education Project (ARSHEP)

ARSHEP is a comprehensive educational tool for adolescent reproductive and sexual health.  Created for clinicians, residency programs, medical educators, and individual learners, the ARSHEP modules provide a curated set of lectures, created as slide decks, that can be freely downloaded, modified, and presented to audiences of clinical providers including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician associates, and others who provide care and services to adolescent patients.  ARSHEP also includes patient-interaction videos, which provide demonstrations for learning and discussion.

The All Students Count Coalition

The All Students Count Coalition (ASCC) is a network of national, state, and community organizations led by Advocates for Youth. We believe in a world where all students have access to learning in welcoming, inclusive, and affirming environments that lead to academic success. By collecting data measuring aspects of young people’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGIE), state and local education agencies, along with their health and community partners, will be better positioned to build inclusive learning environments that offer school programming, policies, and systems inclusive of the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning (LGBTQ+) and nonbinary young people.

Community Health Workers

Over the next few years, Advocates plans to work with academic partners, youth serving organizations, and health care providers to create a pathway for young people from marginalized communities to become community health workers. Community health workers (also known as CHWs, community outreach workers, promotoras, patient navigators and health advocates) are frontline public health workers who work in a variety of settings – clinics, schools, community organizations – to improve health and access to services.  We believe this effort will offer young people a potential path to economic security, will bring more young adults into healthcare jobs to address severe workforce shortages, and will help healthcare and social service agencies build greater connections to youth with lived experience in SRHRJ. For more information contact Karen Torres: [email protected]

Condom Availability Programs (CAP)

Condom Availability Programs (CAP): A Guide for Districts and Schools is designed for use in middle and high schools. It provides the rationale for implementing such a program, the information to get started, and practical step-by-step recommendations for implementing or improving a CAP. The CAP Guide will support district or school administration and staff and/or community partners who want to improve the health of young people by increasing access to sexual health services, specifically condoms.

Future of Sex Education (FoSE)

The Future of Sex Education (FoSE) is a collaboration between Advocates for Youth, Answer, SIECUS and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Founded in 2007, FoSE’s mission is to create an enabling national climate to spur the implementation of honest sex education in our nation’s schools. In the years since FoSE’s founding the group has advocated vociferously against abstinence-only education and in support of more comprehensive approaches. Contributions to the field include the ground-breaking National Sexuality Education Standards, the first national standards providing guidance on the minimum, core information and skills young people need to learn in each grade,  and the National Pre-Service Standards for Sexuality Education, designed to help Institutes of Higher Learning improve the course content they offer their health and physical education teacher-candidates. Most recently, FoSE convened the national and state organizations providing teacher training in sexuality education to launch the Sex Education Collaborative. The Collaborative is working to shift the paradigm in teacher training from one focused on individual curricula to training that builds educators’ skills to effectively teach sex education regardless of the grade they teach or the curriculum they use.

Get Your Life

Get Your Life is a group-based HIV prevention facilitation guide created by and for Black and Latino young men who have sex with men, ages 14–19. Each session is interactive, inclusive, and culturally grounded—focusing on real-life conversations about HIV, STIs, PrEP, decision-making, and self-esteem.

Hope in a Box

Advocates for Youth is proud to operate the Hope in a Box program, bringing LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum and resources into classrooms nationwide. As book bans and curriculum restrictions increasingly target LGBTQ+-affirming content in K–12 schools, this collaboration ensures that educators and librarians have access to inclusive curriculum guides, toolkits, and book lists. For more information, contact: [email protected]

Medical Mentorship for Young People Living with HIV

Medical Mentorship for Young People Living with HIV is a toolkit designed to address the unique challenges youth face when transitioning to adult care—including concerns about privacy, trust, and lack of support. This resource helps young people connect with mentors who share lived experiences and can offer guidance, encouragement, and understanding. Through mentorship, youth are better able to stay engaged in care, build trusting relationships with providers, and achieve viral suppression.

Queer and Gender Equity Project (QGEP)

The Queer and Gender Equity Project partners with schools, clinics, and community organizations to better support LGBTQ youth of color and youth living with HIV. We provide training, resources, and tools to help create inclusive, affirming spaces where all young people can thrive. Want to learn more? Contact Armonte Butler at [email protected].

Queer & Now!

Queer & Now! is Advocates for Youth’s celebration of queer youth. Queer stories are young people’s stories, and we need to make sure queer people are reflected in history, health care, reproductive health and rights, and sex education. We’re queering it all! Check out our  Toolkit, which includes a variety of resources, images, sample social media, and publications to support you in amplifying the voices and experiences of LGBTQ youth.

Racial Justice in Sex Education

Advocates, in collaboration with SisterReach, created a series of asynchronous teacher training modules to increase health and physical education teachers’ awareness, capacity, and skills in integrating racial justice into sex education. The modules help educators practice effectively addressing their own implicit bias, intervene in microaggressions and racism in their classrooms; and build safe, culturally responsive, and affirming learning environments that center the lived experiences of students of color.

Rapid Response for Sex Education Controversies

Advocates works with school districts to provide rapid response assistance when sex education comes under attack. Advocates provides media analysis, an outreach plan, and support to school administrators and teachers to protect sex education in these communities.

Rights, Respect, Responsibility, a K-12th Grade Comprehensive Sexuality Education Curriculum.

This K-12 comprehensive sex education curriculum is fully mapped to the National Sexuality Education Standards, covers all 16 topics deemed essential by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is LGBTQ-inclusive, trauma informed and culturally responsive.  Over 13,000 educators have downloaded 3Rs. 3Rs has been adapted for use in 13 states and more than 500 school districts across the country, reaching millions of young people with sex education that meets the National Sexuality Education Standards.

The Rights, Respect, Responsibility Reproductive Health Access Project

Advocates’ Rights, Respect, Responsibility Reproductive Health Access Project (3Rs RHAP, pronounced RAP) is a youth engagement intervention that promotes sexual and reproductive health (SRH), including the use of preferred contraceptive methods, among youth in clinic and community settings. 3Rs RHAP was conceived in 2017 through a partnership between Advocates for Youth and El Rio Health Center (El Rio), a Federally Qualified Health Center in Tucson, Arizona. Grounded in Advocates’ philosophy of Rights, Respect, Responsibility® and El Rio’s commitment to providing affordable, accessible, and comprehensive primary care services to underserved populations, 3Rs RHAP aims to improve the quality, accessibility, and reach of SRH services through an innovative youth-adult partnership framework. 3Rs RHAP clinics hire and train teams of youth leaders ages 14-24 to work alongside adult allies to provide high quality SRH education and services to their peers. A preliminary evaluation, conducted from 2017-2019, demonstrated that the intervention contributed to a 60% (n=4,400) increase in the number of young people ages 14-24 accessing primary health care services and a 50% (n=1,165) increase in the number of youth accessing contraceptive services at El Rio. Almost twenty thousand teens and young adults have received services through El Rio’s teen clinics since 2017. Advocates and El Rio currently collaborate to offer webinars, technical assistance, and resources to program planners in health centers and social service agencies that wish to adapt key RHAP strategies. For more information contact Karen Torres: [email protected]

Sex Education Teacher Training

Advocates offers a comprehensive, K-12th grade sex education curriculum, Rights, Respect, Responsibility. The curriculum is free and available for download. Its lesson plans are mapped to the National Sexuality Education Standards and it is LGBTQ inclusive, trauma informed and culturally responsive. While we do not require training to use the 3Rs curriculum we highly encourage educators to complete our skills based training. Training can be done in person or can be done through the assistance of a virtual classroom and student avatars. For more information contact Brittany at [email protected]

Sexual Health Services (SHS) in Sexual Health Education (SHE)

Resources for Skill-Based Instruction on Accessing School-Based and Community-Based Sexual Health Services (SHS) in Sexual Health Education (SHE) includes a list of free and fee-associated lesson plans helpful in teaching students how to access sexual health services in their school, via community-link and how to find reliable information online have been identified for use for schools. While lesson plans and materials come from various sources, this list is not comprehensive in scope, and other materials may exist.

Technical Support and Global Partnerships for Sexuality Education and Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Programming

Advocates partners with national, regional, and global youth-serving and youth-led organizations, networks, and bi-lateral, multilateral, and governmental agencies around the world, providing training, technical assistance,and resources on a variety of program strategies and thematic areas, such as sexuality education, parent-child communication, youth-adult partnerships, advocacy, gender equity, gender-based violence prevention, contraceptive access, HIV prevention, treatment and care, and LGBTQ health and rights, among others. For more information contact [email protected].

Trans Affirming Schools Project (TASP)

The Trans Affirming Schools Project (TASP) addresses the specific needs of transgender and non-binary youth in schools and expanded to include an intervention for responding to anti-trans misinformation and disinformation campaigns. Informed by our Transgender and Non-binary young people, both the guide and trainings center the needs of transgender and non-binary youth of color, the project continues to adapt to the shifting political landscape facing youth in schools by providing our capacity building training series, Finally Enough Love, and maintaining an up-to-date digital resource guide.

Virtual PD

Virtual PD is a simulated environment (classroom, health care exam room and office) where professionals can practice with youth avatars using short scenarios and support from an instructional coach, so they can quickly learn and master the skills they need to be effective.