Learn How to Help a Wonderful Sex Ed Website

Posted by Cara, Feministe at 10:41 AM on February 15, 2009.

One of the very best websites in the whole wide world, Scarleteen, is holding a fundraiser. From today, February 14th, until March 15th, a donor will match any and all donations to the website up to $350 per donor or $3,000 total.

Don’t know what Scarleteen is? Well, though I may be gushing, I’m not exaggerating when I say that I personally think that it’s one of the best websites ever invented. After all, I don’t usually put up information about other people’s fundraisers.

Scarleteen is a sex education website for teenagers and young adults. It’s sex positive, focuses on everything from safety to pleasure, anatomy to emotional responses to sexual relationships, promotes non-intercourse types of sex as worthwhile options and is completely LGBT inclusive. It also works to dismantle rape culture with discussions of desire and enthusiastic consent.

Many of you know that sex education, and how it currently sucks and needs a total overhaul, is a topic close to my heart; I write about it regularly over at my other blog, and it’s the topic of my essay in Yes Means Yes. If I could replace the sex education currently being taught in schools with anything, Scarleteen would genuinely be the model from which I would start, and I’m not sure what I would change.

And here’s why they need your help:

One of the tricky parts about financing Scarleteen is that while our traffic is incredibly high, the vast majority of it comes from users who either do not have their own income, or who do not have checking accounts or credit cards with which to make donations. We usually average just one donation per every 500,000 users. That’s one reason why your help is so important: support that comes from those who can give — like past users of Scarleteen who are now adults, or parents, educators, mentors and other adult allies — is what helps provide our services for those who cannot. It’s also why a site like Scarleteen is so important. Due to both age and financial limitations (as well as concerns about safety — particularly for GLBT youth — or privacy), often young adults are also without the resources to purchase good books or access quality counseling and support services and our free, easily accessible information and support is a godsend for many of them.

Want an idea about how some of our users feel Scarleteen has been a help to them? Take a look at some of their emails to us here. You can also have a peek here to see some of the media coverage Scarleteen has gotten in the past, and peek over here to get a better idea of why we do what we do.

Learn how to donate here. Do what you can, and spread the word!

Tagged as: teens, fundraising, sex ed, website, scarleteen

Cara blogs regularly at The Curvature and Feministe.