Reflection

My name is Emiley Charley and I am a Spring Semester senior attending Bowdoin College. As a student that came from a predominantly Black, Hispanic and Latino community where sex education is almost a foreign concept in schools, I decided to use the creation of this website as a chance to explore what communities do when sex education in schools is not enough. This was the initial idea that prompted the theme for this project. I am also a Mellon Mays Fellow doing research on The Racialization of the Distribution of Contraceptives. I decided to combine my interest in sex education in urban communities with my research on reproductive health and justice. Yet, after I started the work for this project, the idea of sex education took me to very different places.

I wanted to include the work organizations are doing to promote Reproductive Health and Reproductive Justice because this is work that also has sex education at it’s foundation. Many organizations that prioritize Reproductive Health and Justice do so by education people about the cause. They also provide services that include pregnancy testing, STD and STI testing, condom and lube distribution as well as basic sex education for all individuals.

Through this project I learned first and foremost that sex education is everywhere and comes in many different forms. Sex education doesn’t have to be the average birds and bees talk. It looks different in schools than it does in grassroots organizations for African American men who are members of the LGBT community. In this case, sex education does or may look like HIV/AIDS awareness education or safe and healthy sexual relationships education. I learned that sex education doesn’t have an age, color, sex, gender, or sexuality.

I learned that some organizations only exist by Facebook or social media more generally. Although a limited presence makes these organizations difficult to find, they are known by their community members; they reach the people for whom they aim to provide. Also, some groups may start off as small as a Facebook page and eventually grow to a website. But most importantly, having even just a page or a Twitter handle to advertise an organization still makes it accessible to the public. In addition, social media has provided a way to give the power to the people. I found that there are many pages that just talk about sex education or Reproductive Health and Justice. Many of these pages were not even contained to our nation but were international. Yet for the purpose of grassroots organizing, a Facebook page seemed to be accessible to people who were a part of the community of the organization.

Two of the most important things that I learned by doing this project is that:

1.) Community organizing groups become integral parts of their community. Because they exist because of community members and for community members, they are deeply situated within the community. Some grassroots organizations that I came across have been in the same community for more than a decade and still maintains to be faithful to that community. They still provide events for members of the group as well as members of the wider community. Their continuous community engagement shows through the dedication of the community to keep these organizations up and running.

2.) People care. Even though there are many organizations that are both national and international, have enormous funds and even bigger boards, people still care enough about their communities to organize at the grassroots level. I found that some communities such as communities in Brooklyn, NY, have many organizations doing very similar work yet all connect somehow. People recognize that there is always work to be done and continue to move in the direction of that work. There will always be another grassroots organization simply because people care.

Finally, I learned that urban education is education that isn’t confined to the walls of a class room of the building of a school. Members or urban communities are educating and are being educated in churches, in community centers, in prisons, through through arts and events, activities and the like. Urban education strives within urban communities and does so by tying communities together.

This website was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn about how people all over the country are organizing around sex education at the grassroots level. I was able to get a glimpse into various organizations and how they serve their communities. Finally, I learned the power that the internet has to connect people, causes and communities.