For decades, Advocates for Youth has worked to ensure that in classrooms across the country, all youth are safe, welcomed, and celebrated for who they are – and that they find representation in policies, programs, and classroom materials. Below is our menu of capacity-building professional development opportunities and resources to support youth-serving adults.

 

Sex Education

Rights, Respect Responsibility

• Rights, Respect, Responsibility (3Rs) is a free, LGBTQ-inclusive sex education curriculum that fully meets the National Sexuality Education Standards and seeks to address both the functional knowledge related to sexuality and the specific skills necessary to adopt healthy behaviors. Contact us.

Virtual Professional Development (Virtual PD)

• Virtual PD is a simulated classroom where educators can practice teaching student avatars using short, common classroom scenarios. An instructional coach provides guidance and feedback to help educators master the skills needed to implement inclusive sex education effectively. Research conducted by the University of Central Florida demonstrates that four 10-minute sessions in the virtual classroom result in statistically significant increases in educators’ skills. Contact us.

Racial Justice in Sex Education

• Advocates, in collaboration with SisterReach, created ten asynchronous teacher training modules to increase health and physical education teachers’ awareness, capacity, and skills in integrating racial justice into sex education. The modules help educators practice effectively addressing their own implicit bias, intervene in microaggressions and racism in their classrooms; and build safe, culturally responsive, and affirming learning environments that center the lived experiences of students of color. Contact us.

 

AMAZE

• AMAZE is a collection of short, animated videos and other resources designed to provide adolescents around the globe with medically accurate, age-appropriate, affirming, and honest sex education they can access directly online. AMAZE envisions a world that recognizes child and adolescent sexual development as natural and healthy, a world in which young people everyone where are supported and affirmed and the adults in their lives communicate openly and honestly with them about puberty, reproductive, relationships, sex, and sexuality. Contact us.

 

Sexual Health Services

Condom Availability Programs (CAP)

• Condom Availability Programs (CAP): A Guide for Districts and Schools is designed for use in middle and high schools. It provides the rationale for implementing such a program, the information to get started, and practical step-by-step recommendations for implementing or improving a CAP. The CAP Guide will support district or school administration and staff and/or community partners who want to improve the health of young people by increasing access to sexual health services, specifically condoms. Contact us.

Providing LGBT-Friendly Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Schools

• This printable poster includes recommendations for school nurses and health center staff in middle and high schools when working with LGBT students who are in need of services. This is a resource written by sexual health professionals in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Contact us.

Sexual Health Services (SHS) in Sexual Health Education (SHE)

• Resources for Skill-Based Instruction on Accessing School-Based and Community-Based Sexual Health Services (SHS) in Sexual Health Education (SHE) includes a list of free and fee-associated lesson plans helpful in teaching students how to access sexual health services in their school, via community-link and how to find reliable information online have been identified for use for schools. While lesson plans and materials come from various sources, this list is not comprehensive in scope, and other materials may exist. Contact us.

 

HIV

Get Your Life

• Get Your Life is a seven-session group-based HIV prevention facilitation guide designed for Black and Latino young men who have sex (YMSM) with men ages 14-19 years old. Following a pilot program that included three large school districts and over 200 Black and Latino youth, Get Your Life is an engaging, inclusive, and culturally- responsive HIV/STI prevention program made by and for Black and Latino Young men. Contact us.

 

LGBTQ+

Queer & Now!

• Queer & Now! is Advocates for Youth’s celebration of queer youth. Queer stories are young people’s stories, and we need to make sure queer people are reflected in history, health care, reproductive health and rights, and sex education. We’re queering it all! Check out our  Toolkit, which includes a variety of resources, images, sample social media, and publications to support you in amplifying the voices and experiences of LGBTQ youth. Contact us.

Trans Affirming Schools Project (TASP)

• The Trans Affirming Schools Project (TASP) is proud to offer a series of trainings to create safer schools! Finally Enough Love is a professional development series designed to build capacity for adults working with Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender-expansive (TNGE) youth in schools. Throughout four, 90-minute sessions, participants will learn foundational knowledge around identities, how to support TNGE youth in hostile learning environments, and practice using the TASP Resource Guide – a comprehensive, up-to-date tool for supporting TNGE youth. Contact us.

Hope in a Box

• Hope in a Box equips K-12 educators with LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, training, and mentorship. Advocates for Youth and Hope in a Box are proud to collaborate to continue building safer and more inclusive classrooms across the country. Together, we use literature to cultivate empathy and ensure every LGBTQ student feels safe, welcome, and included at school. Contact us.

Kikis with louie

• Kikis with louie is a Youtube series that aims to normalize stigmatized conversations about HIV, STIs, healthy relationships, and more. Episodes feature honest conversations with LGBTQ youth and the celebrities, athletes, artists, and activists they admire most. The series spans six-cities and features musician Shamir discussing his bipolar diagnosis, Reggie Bullock of the Detroit Pistons opening up about the murder of his trans sister, and YouTuber Brendan Jordan going in-depth about coming out. Contact us.

Creating Safer Spaces for LGBTQ+ Youth

• Creating Safer Spaces for LGBTQ Youth: A Toolkit for Education,  Healthcare, and Community-Based Organizations toolkit was developed to assist individuals, community-based organizations, providers, healthcare staff, educators, and others that see the value of incorporating key safer space components into their organizations so that young people survive and thrive. Recommendations serve as a guide and should be tailored to each individual young person and organizational setting. Contact us.

 

Youth Engagement

So Change It: A Guide for Students

•  Through social media, events, and even artwork, young people are encouraging each other to care about public health and to work for a better world. So Change It: A Guide for Students can help students improve their world, beginning with their own schools. Interested in a Youth to the Front!: Key Components of Student-Led Campaigns training? Contact us.

Youth Activist Toolkit

• Our Youth Activist Toolkit was developed with youth writers and activists to be a detailed guide to help young people develop a plan, organize a coalition, and define and implement strategies to achieve measurable social impact goals. Contact us.

Youth-Adult Partnerships Framework

• The Youth-Adult Partnerships (YAP) framework is central to all work at Advocates for Youth. The overall goal is to promote attitudes that increase participants’ ability to work with youth as partners in efforts to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Resources and training sessions ensure that young people are intentionally involved in designing, developing, and implementing policies and programs. Resources include trainings on YAP 101 (Adult participant and Youth & Adult participant versions). In addition, resources include Tips for Youth When Working with Adult Allies and Tips for Adults When Working with Youth Leaders. Contact us.

Act Out

• This national network consists of young people who are advocating for the rights of LGBTQ youth. Constant attacks on queer and trans youth at the state, local, and school board levels are not only endangering queer and trans youth, but they are also creating a sense of hopelessness as harmful policies are enacted before many people even know what’s being debated. Young people are the target of these laws, and they are energized and ready to fight back. Contact us.

 

Training Request and Fees

Advocates for Youth is delighted to offer a comprehensive training menu to support teachers and community- based educators in developing the comfort, knowledge and core skills needed to implement sex education, no matter what curriculum they chose to use. Our goal is to help prepare educators to provide consistent high quality sex education that young people deserve.

• All training will include the following:
  • Initial meeting with Advocates for Youth trainer
  • Registration Support
  • Material Review
    • Advocates for Youth trainers will send you the slide deck for your training to review and ensure that the objectives are met
    • Pre-training meeting (within one week of the training)
    • Training
    • Creation of evaluation to distribute at the end of training and summary of results
    • Results (including training recording, if virtual) compiled and shared with participants after the training concults
    • Follow-up meeting
    • Discuss evaluation results and wrap up outstanding requests
• For more information about training and our team, click here.