People Power: Parent and Student Capacity for Change
In Colorado, advocacy for Comprehensivc Sexual Health Education must happen on the district level. Leaders must take the initiative to bring CSHE into their schools due to the lack of a state mandate.
Student Power
Your stories are the most persuasive tool we have in pushing for comprehensive sexual health education. Other advocates can support you, but they do not have the experiences of a current K-12 student. The true measure of any curriculum is how it affects students' lives. In order to know how students are being affected, we need to hear directly from you. By speaking up about what’s missing from your sexual health education curriculum, you offer activists an invaluable perspective. Your voice has the potential to draw the community’s attention to huge inequities and force action. There cannot be a movement without your voices at the center. To learn more about student organizing, click here.
Parent Power
Comprehensive sexual health education gives students the knowledge and confidence they need to make healthy decisions, and it leads to improved health and academic outcomes for young people. As well as talking with your children at home, parents, guardians, and community members can play a critical role in supporting students by working with your local schools to make sure they are teaching the fact-based sexual health education students need. Colorado made a commitment to comprehensive sexual health education by passing HB 13-1081. But to make the promise of this law a reality in classrooms throughout Colorado, we need parents and community members like you to become advocates. For more information on organizing for parents, click here.
Additional Resources
Click here for additional resources that will make your organizing more powerful.
References
Future of Sex Education. (2009). Comprehensive Sex Education: Research and Results. Retrieved from: http://futureofsexed.org/compsexed.html. Available at www.aclunc.org/sex_ed.