Birds and Bees- Launching a Sex Ed Zine!

Here in the province of Quebec in Canada, the government essentially eliminated sex education from the curriculum, effective January 1, 2005. Instead, teachers are supposed to "infuse" it throughout the curriculum. French teachers are being given workshops on how to do so, to date English teachers are not. It's not a mandated thing, it's really up to individual schools to apply as they see fit. As you can imagine, most teachers don't feel comfortable teaching sex ed, so if it isn't a requirement, it isn't going to happen. In Canada, most students already report less than two hours of sex education throughout their entire high school career. This move makes safe spaces for youth to have meaningful learning about sex education even more diminished. Quebec, incidently, has the highest rate of youth having unprotected sex in the country.

One of the activist community groups that is doing something positive and proactive about this in Montreal is Head and Hands, who are introducing The Sense Project into schools this September. The Sense Project is going into several Montreal area schools and will be delivering sex education programs taught by trained community volunteers, and will be training youth to be peer sexualities educators as well. They're doing a fantastic job, and this is really important work.

On July 15th, The Sense Project will be launching The Birds and the Bees - A Sex Ed Zine as a fund raiser and awareness project. All you Montrealers, come out to the Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) to show your support for the healthy growth of sexual health education in this province. Doors open at 8 pm, and ten bucks will get you in AND a copy of the new sex ed zine, with all proceeds going to The Sense Project.

Some of the featured lineups on the evening's roster of entertainment include:


- Performances by People for Audio, Nightwood, City of a Hundred Spires and Anti-School Year

- A panssexual kissing booth

- Circus acts

Come out and show your support for this important cause! See you there :-)

Thanks to the bloggers at Feministing for posting this. Once again, the litmus test is: Can you imagine this advertisement being done with a little boy/young man? Would that be weird and offensive? Kind of just like this is? :-/ I need to find something to post about positive gender messages, this is just depressing. If you have any ideas, please let me know in the comments section... *sigh*

Because I am a Girl...The State of the World's Girls, 2007

Because I am a Girl: The State of the World's Girls, is the first in a series of global reports on girls to be published over the next nine years by Plan UK. Timed to be released on the United Nation's International Day of the Family, it warns that the Millennium Development Goals agreed by world leaders are likely to fail girls living in poverty. Global statistics highlighted in the report paint a bleak picture of some of the challenges facing girls and young women growing up in the world's most impoverished regions:

• Girls aged 15-19 account for 50% of victims of sexual assault worldwide
• Birth complications and unsafe abortions are the leading cause of death for young women aged 15-19
• Seventy per cent of the 1.5billion people living on less than a dollar a day are female
• Stunted growth in estimated 450million women as a result of childhood malnutrition
• Approximately 7.3million young women are living with HIV/AIDS, in comparison to 4.3million men
• Two thirds of 15-19-year-olds newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are female
• Sixty two million girls are out of primary school

Thanks to the astute writers at The F-Word for letting us know about this. You can check for news updates relating to the status of girls at the Plan UK or you can download the report.