Hope. It’s a powerful word. It inspires nations, communities, and individuals – young and old. Hope is, according to Dr. Michael A. Carrera, the most effective contraceptive for teens because “the way that you help young people avoid pregnancy is by providing them with real evidence that good things can happen in their lives.”
For 25 years, Dr. Carrera has led the Children’s Aid Society’s wonderfully successful Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program, which is a holistic, “above the waist” approach to teen pregnancy prevention. Regarding teens as “at promise” rather than “at risk,” the program’s mission is to empower young people through academic support and sex education, development of interests, talents and skills, and preparation for employment opportunities. The Children's Aid Carrera program sees the sum of these activities as having a contraceptive effect.
This approach to teen pregnancy prevention is a proven-effective program that has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy rates by 50%. Now that’s a success story.
The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world. To help turn that tide, Children’s Aid’s Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program is replicated in 21 sites and 30 other adaptions in 20 states, bringing the holistic approach and its message of Hope across the U.S.
The program doesn’t just address teens. There is a component for parents (and interested adults), too – the Parent Family Life & Sexuality Education program. It’s a way for parents to help guide their children through the decisions of young adulthood. It gives parents the facts, language and resources they’ll need to do the job well.
