Chapel Hill students now have the opportunity not only to be educated on sexual health and consent education but also to get paid while doing it.
Teen Connections Peer Education is a local program held by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that trains high school students in topics like sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention, consent education and healthy relationships. Student participants are given a $300 stipend upon completion of the program.
The program provides students with not only information on sexual health but also the tools and the skills to be able to effectively share what they learned in the program with their peers. The program is 12 weeks long with two-hour meetings taking place once a week at the Chapel Hill Public Library.
“I wanted to join [Teen Connections] because it seemed like a more comfortable environment to learn about these things,” junior Olivia Vrba, who is taking the program this year, said. “I feel like health class is vague and not very informative, so I wanted to further educate myself on sexual health and healthy relationships.”
Chapel Hill High School senior Grace Allore was a student in the program last year and is currently interning for the Chapel Hill session of the program this year.
“I do a lot of other sexual education in the community, like sexual assault prevention, so Teen Connections is really closely aligned with all of my interests, and the fact that I was getting paid to learn about this stuff was pretty awesome,” Allore said of participating in the program.
Allore worked to get Chapel Hill students involved by asking teachers to inform their students about Teen Connections, as well as by asking Chapel Hill clubs such as the Young Feminists Club and the Queer Straight Alliance to get the word out to their members.
Senior Brian Richardson is participating in the Chapel Hill session of Teen Connections this year. “I will use the information I learn from the class to help educate my peers,” Richardson said. “By spreading sexual health education, we can help everyone make safer and make more informed decisions.”
Daniela Sostaita is the community health educator for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, responsible for promoting the program and facilitating the sessions.
“We are trying to give the students in the program as much information as we can regarding STIs, pregnancy prevention, contraceptive methods, healthy relationships and consent and sexual violence—not just giving them the content, but also the tools and the skills to be able to effectively share what they learned in the program,” Sostaita said.
According to Sostaita, some form of the Teen Connections program has been around for about ten years. Over time, the program has changed and shifted based on the audience that is being catered to: “We used to use a different curriculum called Cuidarse, which is Spanish for ‘take care of yourself,’ and that curriculum was very much geared towards a Latino audience in Durham, where there is a high Latino population.”
Aside from Teen Connections, other local organizations have been working to educate high school students on sexual health and consent.
In 2017, Youth Against Rape Culture (YARC), a program with which Allore is affiliated, began a program in April, which is sexual assault awareness month, called CHHS Loves Consent.
“Last year, students could do a challenge demonstrating their knowledge of consent or posting why they like it on social media, and then they would receive little prizes,” Allore said. “This year, we are going to be doing a fundraiser by selling consent-related merchandise in order to raise money for the Orange County Rape Crisis Center, which YARC is affiliated with.”
Planned Parenthood also offers single session presentations for community organizations or agencies in the area. Sostaita has partnered with the Emerson Waldorf School in Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer center, El Centro Hispano and other agencies for presentations.
According to Sostaita, the three most requested topics for presentations are STIs, contraception and healthy relationships: “We like to push those three topics in particular since they’re the most pressing.”
Students interested in becoming affiliated with Teen Connections or Planned Parenthood can contact Grace Allore at grace.allore@gmail.com or Daniela Sostaita at daniela.sostaita@ppsat.org.
