Grassroots Community Organizing
As part of larger initiatives, a few communities have used grassroots
organizing to increase parent-child communication about sexuality and
to stimulate other community changes. One of the largest and
best-funded examples of this is the Plain Talk initiative.1 This was
a multi-year program implemented in five communities, three of
which participated in the impact evaluation.
The initiative focused on sexually active youth and strove to
increase adult-youth communication about sexuality and contraception
as well as to increase access to contraceptive services.To do this,
it launched a variety of community activities to create a consensus
among adults about the need to protect sexually active youth by
encouraging contraceptive use. In addition, the initiative provided
adults with the knowledge and skills to communicate more effectively
with teens about sexual behavior and contraception.
One of the communities
used professional staff to
talk with and organize the
parents while the other two
used trained community
residents.The professional
staff was able to begin
workshops quickly but
reached a smaller number
of parents (approximately 125) during the course of the project.
In comparison, the trained community residents required many
months of training but ultimately reached more parents
(800 to1,350).
At one of the sites, parents participated in a single two-hour
workshop, while at another they participated in four two-hour
workshops. In addition to efforts to increase adult-youth
communication, one of the three communities opened a clinic
serving adults and teens, another opened an adolescent clinic,
and the third increased its hours for adolescents in a pre-existing
clinic.Youth also received reproductive health information at several
community events.
Pre-test and post-test surveys revealed that there were significant
increases in the percentage of sexually active teens who had
talked with any adult about pregnancy or STDs (but not birth
control).There was, however, no significant change in the number
of teens who were not currently sexually active who had talked
with an adult about any of these three topics. Survey results also
revealed no significant changes in use of contraception at first or
last sexual intercourse.
Reference
- J. Grossman and S. Pepper, Plain Talk and Adolescent Sexual
Behavior (Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures, 1999).
