At 6:00am on Monday, March 23rd, nine seniors and one sophomore from the Southern Nevada Young Women's Collaborative met at the airport - ready to fly up to Carson City, NV to talk to elected officials and demand better sex ed for Nevada's schools. We were excited about the trip - Nevada consistently ranks both highest in teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. and highest in high school drop-out rates - and it's time to change it!

Prior to the trip, we collected over 150 petition signatures, even while facing disapproval and refusal from high school teachers and administrators to even bring up the subject. Ha! But we found, overall, that our fellow students want sex ed too!
 
During our Lobby Training, we divided into two teams for the appointments. We reviewed our “ask,” which was for each state representative to sign-on to a letter directed towards the Department of Health and the Department of Education asking for a rejection of abstinence-only-until-marriage program funding and general support for comprehensive sexuality education. We covered the description of comprehensive sexuality education using materials from Advocates For Youth (AFY) and Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom (SYRF), emphasizing abstinence as a component, its basis in science not ideology, its need for funding and its widespread support from parents, students and some religious groups.

We met with 11 representatives. They were overall very supportive of SNYWC and our initiative for better sex ed. We identified three sponsors for a sex ed bill for the future, and got six of our representatives to sign on to our letter!

Up Next - Department of Health here we come!