May is Sex Ed for All Month, an opportunity to raise awareness and call for real investment in sex education in schools and communities across the country.
Sex Ed for All Month is coordinated by the Sex Education Collaborative, in collaboration with a national coalition of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations committed to ensuring equitable and accessible sex education for ALL young people nationwide.
Why is Sex Education Important?
Sex education helps young people learn how to have healthy relationships, make informed decisions, think critically about the world, be a good ally to those who are marginalized, and love themselves for who they are.
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Sex education is more than just putting condoms on bananas. And it's even more than STI prevention and avoiding unintended pregnancy. Sex education teaches young people the importance of treating everyone with dignity and respect, with racial justice, fairness, and compassion for others as core values.
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Sex education in elementary school covers foundational building blocks around things like consent and boundary setting with friends, understanding our bodies, and the diversity in the ways people form and have families.
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Sex education in middle school addresses relevant issues such as puberty, healthy peer relationships and anti-bullying, and media literacy skills to support kids in developing a healthy body image.
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Sex education in high school covers everything from birth control and safer sex to sexual decision-making and communication skills, to understanding how society and culture shape our ideas about sex, gender, and race, and how we can work towards more equitable communities.
The Ohio Center for Sex Education
Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio (PPGOH) is proud to provide fact-based, inclusive, and culturally relevant sexual health education. Our sexuality education and community outreach programs are conducted through the Ohio Center for Sex Education (OCSE).
The OCSE helps Ohioans make informed decisions about their sexual health and relationship through joyful, honest, and accessible programming. Even in a state that is downright hostile towards sexual health education, the OCSE serves as the largest, most trusted source of sexuality education in Ohio.
Delivering Sexuality Education Across Ohio
The OCSE health education programs empower individuals with the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions regarding their sexual health and relationships to live fulfilling, authentic lives. The OCSE’s highly trained Community Health Education Specialists are skilled at facilitating groups of all ages in a variety of settings such as schools, community spaces, and online.
The OCSE is committed to providing joyful and empowering sexuality education through innovative programming:
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The OCSE develops a variety of programs to give young people, caring adults, and youth-serving professionals the tools needed to build a thorough understanding of sexual and other health topics. Most teens say that they want to have conversations about sex with their parents or caregivers, but often it is the adult who gets nervous having these conversations.
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Through the OCSE’s peer-to-peer sexual health education program, teens receive leadership training and comprehensive education about sexual health and relationships to become trusted Peer Educators.
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Our OCSE team collaborated with three other affiliates from Ohio and New Jersey to create a virtual sexuality education program for high school age participants. This groundbreaking and customizable sexuality education may impact the whole nation, with the virtual curriculum and tools made accessible to outside partners and all affiliates across the Planned Parenthood Federation.
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In collaboration with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the OCSE offers a free chat/text program where trained health educators are available to answer anonymous sexual health questions and help people come up with a plan.
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And so much more!
Everyone Deserves Access to Education
Where you live shouldn’t determine the quality of the education you receive. But without a national sex education program or full funding at the federal level, the quality of programs varies across the country, if they exist at all. Young people deserve answers to their questions about sex and relationships, free of shame and stigma no matter who they are, where they live, or what their income is.
Ohio remains the only state in the country without a standard curriculum for health education, meaning that sexual health programming in Ohio is not mandated to be medically accurate, age-appropriate, culturally competent, or inclusive of LGBTQ+ students. Our young people simply deserve better.
We are committed to bridging the gap for communities who have limited resources to accessible sexual health education here in Ohio. Access to sexual health education ensures that individuals have the skills they need to make empowered decisions about their bodies and relationships throughout their lifetime.
For more information on the Ohio Center for Sex Education and the programs they offer, visit our website. To talk to a trained health educator, text 'PPNOW' to 774636 (PPINFO).
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