The current state of sex education leaves much to be desired. A recent study in BMJ Open found that students around the world felt their teachers weren't providing them with adequate information or resources about sexuality.
Alba Alvarado, a teenager from San Rafael, CA, set out to solve this problem in her own high school.
A troubling number of girls at Alvarado's school—including her brother's girlfriend and several of her friends—got pregnant as teenagers, and many had to leave school to care for their families. She believes this happened largely because the students only got three course periods devoted to sex ed throughout their whole time in high school, and very little time was spent discussing birth control.
"I was only nine when I became an Auntie, but I was old enough to see the great struggle that comes with teen parenthood," she told Glamour. "Our whole family fought to make ends meet and the emotional stability of my brother and his girlfriend began to crumble. College dreams earned with good grades went out the window."
Since her school wasn't doing much to stop this cycle, Alvarado decided to take matters into her own hands. She was part of Next Generation Scholars, a program that helps students develop projects to improve their communities, and she decided her mission would be to install condom machines in her school bathrooms.
When she first spoke about the idea in front of the school board, parents and staff gave her a standing ovation—but the board stayed silent. So, once again, she decided to handle the situation herself. She began filling her backpack with condoms and distributing them to other students, earning her the nicknames "Condom Queen" and "Human Condom Machine."
"As it turns out, this was a great way to push the conversation forward," she remembers. "It turned sex education and birth control access from something so awkward and taboo to something funny and commonplace." It was especially funny when she accidentally dropped 300 condoms in the hallway.
Many classmates were supportive, and some teachers even let her put bowls of condoms in their classrooms. But others were concerned that condoms would just lead people to have more sex. "People asked me why a 'good girl' like me was pushing condoms, but given the crisis we were living in, I knew I had to keep pushing forward," she said.
Finally, after two years of waiting, her proposal for the condom machines passed—but without any funding. But she didn't give up. Instead, she got in touch with the National Coalition of STD Directors, which was able to get 10,000 condoms from Trojan to stock in her school bathrooms, as well as guides on STDs.
These kinds of resources can have a huge impact on students who aren't able to safely get contraception themselves, Alvarado explained. Some risk facing punishment at the hands of their families and peers. Some aren't able to get to the clinic on their own. Some don't speak enough English to interpret information provided to them. Teens in these situations have to jump through hoop after hoop just to avoid getting pregnant.
Alvarado hopes to see a day where sex ed is taught throughout high school and at home, not just during a few class periods freshman year, and people of all socioeconomic statuses and cultural backgrounds have access to safe sex supplies and information. And now, as a freshman at Wesleyan University, she's continuing to make that happen. She's currently building a movement for safe access to birth control in low-income immigrant communities like the one she grew up in.
"I, like many other young men and women, am tired of seeing my peers leave school to have children and watching them face an ongoing struggle that we could all help prevent. The loss of potential is grave and it affects us all," she said.
Still, she's hopeful that we can transform our culture around sexuality. "I believe in the power of young women making direct change in their communities," she said. That is, after all, what she did.
