Cara Richter, Project Director of the AGAPE Project, said Thursday the organization’s abstinence-until-marriage program will be offered on additional school campuses beginning this fall.
The organization provided abstinence education programs to 14 schools in southern Oklahoma counties during the last school year and will add another seven this year, Richter said. Project staff also will offer state-mandated HIV/AIDS training to junior high and high school students.
The AGAPE Project, which is operated by the Pregnancy Resource Center of Southern Oklahoma, is funded in part through a federal Community-Based Abstinence Education program grant.
Nationally, more high school students are waiting longer to lose their virginity, and the number who report having four or more sexual partners dropped between 1991 and 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Study. However, the teen birth rate rose in more than half of the states in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Oklahoma’s 2006 teen birth rate was 10 percent higher than the previous year and was among the highest in the nation.
The CDC reported at least one in four teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease. A 2007 CDC study reported 18,500 Oklahomans had an STD in 2006.
AGAPE Project staff met with a group of community representatives Thursday at the Ardmore Convention Center to discuss how the program empowers teens to make healthy choices through risk avoidance. The meeting was facilitated by Pal-Tech, which provides technical assistance to several community-based abstinence projects in Oklahoma, West Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska and North Carolina.
“Abstinence is a choice the kids have,” AGAPE Project Coordinator Karen Tadych said. “They have all the power over the choice, but they have no power over the consequences of their choices.”
The project also offers a “train-the-trainer” program to parents and teachers so they can implement abstinence programs themselves.
“Parents are the biggest influence in their children’s lives when it comes to sex,” Just Say Yes Executive Director Dan Bailey said.
Bailey said he tries to emphasize the positive results that come when teenagers refrain from sex, alcohol, drugs, tobacco and violent behavior. AGAPE Project educators encourage students to focus on their dreams, goals, hopes and aspirations.
The organization is sponsoring a free program for youngsters and their parents at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 30 at the Ardmore Convention Center to encourage students to make healthy choices and delay having sex until marriage. The event will feature national speaker and author Justin Lookadoo and the cinema presentation “Look Before You Leap.”
steve.biehn@ardmoreite.com
Steve Biehn, 221-6546
