Welcome to the Young Activists Homepage!

What did you do with your spring break ? Students aged 13-17 in West Palm Beach spent their Spring Break learning about sex education and public advocacy. As a part of the learning experience students designed posters to advocate for sex education and reproductive rights.
Check out the posters in this slideshow!

There are 237 reasons to have sex — and having a child is number 27. That's what researchers from the University of Texas at Austin found. They surveyed 2,000 women and men about their motivations for having sex; this ample (though not exhaustive) list, published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, is the result.

As the saying goes, it's a man's world — except, perhaps, when it comes to reproductive and sexual health. There, by and large, women's reproductive health issues reign — just think of the TV ads for the new cervical cancer vaccine, or the pink ribbons for breast cancer research.

Get Active with Vox: Voice for Planned Parenthood

1. Educate your campus about reproductive rights and healthcare.

Vox chapters have a big job to do when countering confusion and anti-choice lies about important topics, such as Emergency Contraception. Vox should be a visible source of information, tabling in common areas around campus, publishing letters and columns in your student newspaper and holding events.

Forcing students to decide between buying books and supplies for the semester or maintaining their sexual health is unacceptable. It is
essential that we as college students stand up for ourselves and contact our legislators. We must demand that our representatives take
the initiative to change the legislation in the Federal Deficit Reduction Act that dissuades pharmaceutical companies from offering

There is still time to make your voice heard and support Florida teens getting the information they need to make healthy decisions - including medically-accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education.TAKE ACTION NOW! to tell your legislators to support policies that provide our youth with the comprehensive sex education they need to protect themselves and make responsible choices.

Sexuality can be so confusing! So many terms, concepts, and ideas that it is sometimes hard to keep up with. So, let's break it down a bit.

Sexual orientation is a person's natural attraction to others. This refers to how people think and feel.

Sexual behavior is the sexual activity in which a person chooses to engage. This refers to what people do.

Sexual identity is how a person identifies herself or himself. This refers to what people say and choose to call themselves, or identify themselves.

After reading about the crisis Manatee County is facing in regards to teen pregnancy one thing was evident; the county's approach to abstinence only sexual education is failing miserably. Here are the sobering facts:

Manatee County has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state.

Out of 67 counties, Manatee is the 17th highest; and, in births to teens 10 to 14 years of age, Manatee has the 13th highest rate.

In 2006, one-third of 2,196 ninth-graders surveyed admitted that they had sexual intercourse. This was a 3 percent increase over the 2004 results.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that both embraces and rejects issues surrounding sex and sexuality. These mixed messages make it particularly difficult for parents and other caregivers to discuss sexual matters at home. Since we are constantly bombarded with mixed messages, social pressures may conflict with family values creating a big problem when it comes to sexual education at home.

Thinking back on my own childhood I learned about sexual matters from my friends, and I might add most of the information was grossly incorrect. How about you?