Sweet Seventeen.
Good news for Iowans! Just last week the state’s Governor Chet Culver agreed to reject hundreds of thousands of federal dollars for abstinence only education, which will make the state the seventeenth to reject the federal funding under Title V. The title provides approximately 40 million dollars in funding nationwide for the ineffective and purely ideological sexual education method, and in the past year there has been a huge trend of rejecting these funds. Culver made his decision following insistence from teen pregnancy prevention organization, FutureNet.
Rhonda Chittenden, executive director of the organization, said, “Iowa must end this poor fiscal and public health policy now. There is no reliable evidence to date that these abstinence-only programs impact the long-term behavioral outcomes at which they aim, such as the delay of sexual initiation and reduction of adolescent pregnancies and STI/HIV infections.”
FutureNet’s commitment to progressive change in their state has caught our eye and earned them the title of Hero of the Week! Here is their kick ass mission statement:
The mission of FutureNet is to support within Iowa a leadership network concerned with issues of adolescent pregnancy prevention, parenting, and sexual health.
The organization is not only pressuring Governor Culver to abstain from abstinence-only but also has several other programs that promote positive and effective sex education. Their TxT (Talking Sex Together) campaign merges youth-friendly text messaging with sex education to encourage communication that will help prevent teen pregnancy and inform teens about safe sex. Also worthy of mentioning is the organization’s initiative called Touchstones: Sexual Health Measures that Matter. This multi-year project aims to ensure that by 2012 all sex education in the state of Iowa will be designed and implemented according to science-based practice.
Great job, Futurenet!