Peer-to-Peer Sex Ed Goes High-Tech
RSSBy Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 12/08/2009
For a teen, getting a pamphlet on safe sex from an adult is an instant tune-out. But what about a text from a peer to come to a meeting on the subject?
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Teen2Teen members received 25 hours of intensive training on the basics of sexuality, HIV, identity, peer education, and STDs. |
As the newest peer educator through the Cascade AIDS Project Bennette would know. The Portland, OR-based organization recently launched Teen2Teen, a program training Bennette and about 100 other teens on how to teach their peers on the facts about safe sex, HIV, and AIDS, but in the way they connect to each other—through new media, chat software, and text messages, says Michael Anderson-Nathe, director of Prevention & Education Services for the Cascade AIDS Project.
Funding for the new program came from $2.5 million in grants through the Office of Minority Heath in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced the funding just before World AIDS Day on December 1. While approximately 31.3 million adults live with HIV around the globe, 2.1 million young people under the age of 15 are infected with the virus as well.
Ten grants were given to community-based groups, including Casade, to curb HIV/AIDS Transmission Among High Risk Minority Youth and Adolescents, which the federal agency has tagged the CHAT program.
Cascade’s grant went to enlisting teens to work with their peers and to start a video training program so young people can make short films about HIV and AIDS, and then share them with friends through MySpace and Facebook. The first training session started in early December.
“We’re not just tackling HIV outreach, but also issues around general sexuality,” says Anderson-Nathe. “Because when we’re talking about HIV prevention, we need to also talk about safe sex.”
Bennette would concur that some of his friends don’t exactly have the right details about safe sex and HIV—and he knows they’re going to be harder to reach.
“There are some who are afraid that if they learn more about it they’ll be less afraid and might get it,” says Bennette.
Anderson-Nathe hopes that Bennette and his peer team will eventually be able to reach about 10,000 other teens over the course of the three-year project from general outreach at school and over the Internet.
“Peers talk to each other and there is some question as to how reliable that information is,” says Anderson-Nathe. “But we can train them on how to reach other young people through technology, and assure they will have medically accurate information.”
