Ms. Foundation for Women - Sexuality Education

http://ms.foundation.org/our_work/broad-change-areas/womens-health/sexuality-education

Sexuality Education

Public support, including that of a majority of parents, is strongly behind ensuring access to age-appropriate, medically-accurate, comprehensive sexuality education for youth. Yet comprehensive sexuality education remains absent from many schools across the U.S.—even though federal funding for abstinence-only programs was eliminated in 2009.

The Ms. Foundation knows that access to comprehensive, medically-accurate sexuality education is fundamental to the health and well-being of women and youth—and their communities. Our vision of a just and safe world requires that all women, girls, boys and LGBTQ youth have the necessary information to make healthy decisions about their bodies and their lives.

For over two decades the Ms. Foundation has invested in grassroots organizations that have identified sexuality education as key to women and girls’ reproductive health, rights and justice. Time and again, whether teenage Latinas in Albuquerque, NM or LGBTQ youth in Spokane, WA, our grantees have known best what they and their peers need to lead healthy and safe lives, and have become trusted voices for leadership and change.

In 2005, building on over 15 years of investment in sexual health education, the Ms. Foundation created the Sexuality Education Advocacy Initiative (SEAI). Through SEAI, the Ms. Foundation delivers strategic funding, and hands-on, targeted training to a diverse range of state-based organizations and coalitions poised for key policy wins. While federal funding has a significant impact on sexuality education nationwide, we direct our support to local and state organizing because policy advocacy and implementation efforts overwhelmingly occur at these levels.

In states where positive legislation has been passed, the Ms. Foundation supports organizing to implement new standards and curriculum—classroom by classroom, school by school, and district by district. On the heels of the elimination of federal funding for abstinence-only programs—a huge win for our grantees and their allies—we are working to ensure that grassroots coalitions now have the resources and power to leverage federal funding for comprehensive sexuality education in their communities. We also provide resources and opportunities for groups to connect and learn from one another; encourage collaboration among local, state and national efforts; and aim to strengthen a nationwide movement for comprehensive sexuality education so that it becomes a reality in young people’s lives across the U.S.

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We're Taking Our Support for Sex Ed to the South!

The Ms. Foundation is now working to address the urgent need for sexual health education in the US South – a region where you are more likely to have HIV, live below the federal poverty level and lack health insurance than any other in the country. Learn more.

Between 2006-2008, Ms. Foundation SEAI grantees had key policy wins in six of ten targeted states including: passage of the Washington State Healthy Youth Act; mandated comprehensive sexuality education for grades seven and above in New Mexico; mandated sexuality education in all California public schools; and Montana’s and New Mexico’s rejection of federal abstinence-only money.

Learn more about Our Impacts

Story of Impact and Innovation: Ms. Foundation Southern Strategy

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation produced a video and publication to tell the story of the Ms. Foundation Southern Strategy. Read more and view the video.

In Ohio, the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland learned that abstinence-only education was hurting their ability to prevent teens from becoming infected with HIV and AIDS. They adopted a program of comprehensive sexuality education to fight the costs of ignorance. Learn more and view video

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Ms. Foundation for Women, 12 MetroTech Center, 26th Fl, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Telephone:(212) 742-2300|Fax: (212) 742-1653|Email: info@ms.foundation.org