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Let's Get Active!
Today the Earth is home to more than 6.5 billion people, with almost half of the global population under the age of 25. The Global Population and Environment Program believes that as future leaders, youth deserve information that will enable them to make empowered decisions about their lives. Access to comprehensive sex education teaches young people to make healthy decisions, so that they can protect themselves and the planet. Adjoa Tetteh
Ever since, I have been a part of a movement advocating for a more comprehensive and medically accurate approach to sexuality education in Chicago schools and communities, as well as nationwide. Through peer education, community organizing, and state lobbying, SEA seeks to introduce youth to the information most aren't getting in their current sex education programs, while also offering them opportunities to become active in social and political campaigns to make comprehensive sex education the norm. In 2005, one of our parent organizations, Advocates for Youth, connected us with Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program (GPEP) to organize a discussion exploring the relationships among global sexual and reproductive health education, population growth, and its environmental impacts. It was refreshing to see other activists articulate and put into action the same ideas and beliefs I possessed, about how the quality of sexuality education permeates so many other areas of life like social welfare, poverty, and natural resource depletion. The deep interconnections among sexuality education and social, economic, and environmental issues is why the denial of access to information and services is such a pressing matter. This is a problem that spans the globe. The international exportation of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and the underlying dogmas that accompany them have been placed at the seat of the fight against AIDS. Throughout the world, youth and adults alike are denied access to the skills, information, and health services-reproductive and otherwise-that they both need and want to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STIs like syphilis and HIV. Furthermore, the withholding of desperately needed funding has plagued the international cause as well as our own fight in the U.S. With no historical source of federal funding for comprehensive sex education in the United States to date, and the continued U.S. financial withdrawal from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), communities around the world lack the means necessary to provide the quality of education and services they deserve. Working with the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program has helped me to see both the gravity of these interconnected problems and the need for solutions on a global scale. With my own efforts, I believe I have tried to undertake a few by lobbying on the state and federal level about local and international access, educating Chicago high school students and empowering them to become advocates for their own sexual well-being, and leading research projects focused on sexual health and sexuality education. Attending conferences like the Sierra Club co-sponsored "One Voice Summit," organizing awareness-raising events like SEA's "OPERATION: SEXUCATION!", as well as hosting amazing guests like fellow sex education activist Shelby Knox , and Sierra Student Coalition leader Ty Dawson -- who recently visited our campus during a Sierra Club "Sex and Environment" tour-are a few other ways I am taking action. Recent events have taught me that my desire for social change cannot be quelled. I will continue collaborating with the GPEP in the future to further open eyes, hearts, and minds to the dire need for access, education and environmental protection. Photo used with permission. Up to TopHOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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I was first introduced to population activism by way of my passion for sexual and reproductive rights. In 2004 I joined a student organization at the University of Chicago, Sex Education Activists (SEA).