First Priority is partnering with Lifeline Children’s Services to educate teens about the long-term consequences of teen pregnancy. Please read the letter below from our dear friend Traci Newell at Lifeline Children’s Services to learn how you can get involved with this great ministry opportunity.
What if someone told you that you could help a child from being subject to…
• Poverty?
• Being raised in a single-parent home?
• Teen Pregnancy?
• Neglect?
Would you want to help? You can.
Teen pregnancy and the costs of teen parenting have a financial price tag of over $10 billion per year and a greater cost, physically and emotionally, to the children involved. The effects of teen parenting on children are linked to the issues stated above. Fatherlessness alone is creating an entire generation of children who have no concept of the type of home and family intended for children. Over 43% of our nation’s children are born to single women, and less than 8% of pregnant teens will marry the fathers of their children.
In 2002, a program began that was aimed at educating teens about the long-term consequences of teen pregnancy. That program, “Decisions, Choices & Options: Facts about Teen Pregnancy,” started with one high school and is now in over 40 schools in the Middle Tennessee area and has recently expanded to cover the states of Alabama and Mississippi. This classroom presentation begins with the message of abstinence and then reveals the difficult truth about each of the options facing a teen in an unplanned pregnancy: parenting, abortion and adoption. The option of adoption rises to the top as the most beneficial choice of the three. To our knowledge, there is no other curriculum like this one in our state that includes information on all of a pregnant teen’s options.
Lifeline Children’s Services began taking this program into local high schools last year and is receiving more requests for the presentation from interested schools. Our coverage up to this point has been primarily in Shelby County, but we would love to increase the number of schools to include Jefferson County and Birmingham City as well. Would you please join with us in our efforts to speak the truth in love to our teens?
In order to get this important and powerful program into the communities that surround us, we need willing volunteers to co-lead presentations and to help us make connections with teachers, school administrators and youth leaders to get a foot in the door of other schools and churches.
If you would be interested in learning more about partnering with Lifeline Children’s Services to take this education to the kids in your community, please make plans to attend a brief interest meeting and training on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m. at the office of Lifeline, 2104 Rocky Ridge Road, Birmingham, AL, 35216. Our time together will include an overview of the actual PowerPoint presentation and video(s) and further explanation of the needs and benefits of the program.
It is our great joy to partner with First Priority to offer this training to you. If you are able to attend, please RSVP to Traci Newell at traci.newell@lifelineadoption.org or (205) 972-8467. I sincerely hope that you will make it a priority to join us in October to learn more about this exciting opportunity for the youth in your area!
Sincerely,
Traci Newell
Education Coordinator
Lifeline Children’s Services