DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
WISH LIST: $100: provides food at Youth Leadership Task Force meetings; $500: sponsors a 3-part parent-child communication workshop; $1000: 5 leadership training sessions for teens
Founded in 1999 with the mission of cutting teen pregnancy in half by 2005, DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy exceeded its original goal. Today, the mission is to improve lives of adolescents and halve the rate again by 2015 -- because teen pregnancy is costly in so many ways. Young mothers drop out of school; the risk of abuse and neglect to children rises; and families begun by teens require tremendous emotional, social, and financial support. So what's the strategy? Get the whole community involved, building partnerships across neighborhoods and ideologies. Generate good data and "best practices," share them broadly, and make sure that personal and policy decisions are grounded in them. Place the issue of teen pregnancy front and center in the media, and bring teens into the process, training them (and their parents) to be their own best advocates. The work has paid off, but there is so much to be done: in 2006 alone there were nearly 1,000 births to 15-19 year olds. Everyone has a role to play in preventing teen pregnancy.
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