Waiting 4

Safe Surrender *A Member of*
	Program Components
	Making The Best Choice For Me! The Worth Waiting 4! program is specifically designed for middle school students as an intervention to unhealthy behaviors, especially early sexual activity. The Worth Waiting 4! program speakers will present abstinence-until-marriage as the best and healthiest choice for seventh graders. The presentations concentrate on the potential physical consequences of sexual activity before marriage, as well as the emotional and relational consequences of promiscuity. The two-day sessions will establish through lecture, role-playing, and activities that living an abstinent life-style has lifelong rewards. The trained speakers lead the students to a better understanding of the complex nature of this subject, while identifying the choices they have and how those choices have either positive benefits or negative consequences. The goal of the program is help young people become good marriage partners and responsible citizens. At the conclusion of the sessions, the students are given an opportunity to make a private commitment to live an abstinent until marriage life-style, one of the factors most strongly associated with a delay in the onset of early sexual activity.

	Making The Best Choice For Me!
	is designed: to promote abstinence as an attainable goal for all students to develop students' self-esteem to improve students' life options through exercises in responsibility making better choices dealing with peer pressure and to discover the realities of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy. Each student participating in the class will receive a course booklet and other Worth Waiting 4! materials designed to reinforce the abstinent life-style.


TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE:		Ninth Grade/High School
TRUE or FALSE:
1 in 2 sexually active people will contract an STD by age 25		"I Am Worth Waiting 4!" is a ninety minute presentation made in ninth grade Health classes.
A person can be infected and NOT know it		Through lecture and activities, students learn that all choices have positive benefits or negative consequences.
Some STDs have NO cure; some are fatal		Along with information on STDs, pregnancy, and contraception failure rates, students are given tools for decision-making and refusal skills.
Every day, 8,000 teens become infected with an STD		Each student participating in the class will receive a number of Worth Waiting 4! materials designed to reinforce the message of abstinence until marriage.
Condoms offer no protection against HPV
7 out of 10 teen mothers drop out of school		High School Health Fairs
1 person every 13 minutes contracts HIV in the US
Every 29 minutes a teen becomes pregnant in NC		During the spring, Worth Waiting 4! participates in Health Fairs at the four high schools.
Teens aged 15-19 are at greater risk of STDs than adults		The Health Fairs, sponsored by the Nash-Rocky Mount Schools, are designed to promote good health habits among our community's youth.
25% of new HIV/AIDS cases are under 22 years old		Worth Waiting 4!'s booth is always very popular and teens are given a variety of materials designed to promote abstinence until marriage.
ALL THESE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE


		parentWISE


		Worth Waiting 4! believes that parents or guardians should be the primary sex educators of their teens. We want to encourage communication between parents or guardians and their children. Through parentWISE, newsletter/flyers will be distributed to the parents or guardians of seventh grade students in the Nash-Rocky Mount Schools. The newsletter will provide tools for parents or guardians to impact their teenagers by helping them make positive, healthy choices. National surveys report that parents who express disapproval of sexual activity before marriage are less likely to have sexually active teens.


The choice to be sexually active these days is a very dangerous one. Today, there are nearly 25 different STDs and most of them have no cure. As many as 33,000 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases are recorded every day in the United States. Sexually transmitted diseases in women, especially teenage girls aged 15-19, are more severe and more damaging than STDs in men. Although embarrassing and painful, STDs can also cause emotional stress, infertility, cancer, and even death. Many STDs are not prevented by using a condom. Research show that condoms may not prevent the transmission of most STDs. Condoms offer only risk reduction of diseases and pregnancy, not risk elimination. In fact, condoms offer no protection from Human papilloma virus-an incurable virus linked to cancer.