Program Designed for Black Teens Evolves to Incorporate Language and Culture of Latinos
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 16, 2007
When the Rev. Evelyn Perez describes the strong feelings sex generates to the Latino teens in her church sex-education classes, she uses the metaphors of their cultures.
Sex, she tells those whose families come from Mexico, "is like eating a jalapeño -- it is hot!" For her Puerto Rican students, she relates it to the weather in their families' homeland: "You know how hot it gets."
The students, ages 13 to 17, understand instantly, she said.
The conversations are part of the transformation of a faith-based sex-education curriculum designed for black youths. "Keeping It Real," written a decade ago, uses biblical wisdom to help teens sort through sexuality with trained facilitators.
The Latino version, "¡Manteniéndolo Real!" was presented last week at the annual National Black Religious Summit on Sexuality.
The summit, started 11 years ago by the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, a minister at Fellowship Baptist Church in the District and executive director of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, was aimed at getting black churches to speak up about issues of health and sexuality, including teen pregnancy, the spread of HIV/AIDS and anti-gay violence.
It has expanded to Latino churches, whose members face many of the same issues, Veazey said. But reception has been slow, he added, because leaders of more conservative Latino churches, many of which are Catholic or Pentecostal, are reluctant to adopt the coalition's programs because of its embrace of abortion rights and gay rights.
More than 500 black and Latino churchgoers from across the country gathered at Howard University's School of Divinity in Northeast Washington for the three-day conference, which was sponsored by the District-based coalition.
Leaders said the program, aimed at reducing teen pregnancy and risky sexual activity, is desperately needed among Latino adolescents.
Latinas have the highest teen birth rate of major racial and ethnic groups in the United States, according to figures released last week by the National Center for Health Statistics. In 2005, the birth rate per 1,000 Latino teens was 48 -- three times as high as for non-Hispanic white teens and a third higher than black teens' birth rates.
The trend is similar in the sexual activity rate. Although the percentage of high school students who report having sexual intercourse has plummeted for non-Hispanic white youths and for black youths in the past 15 years, it has held steady for Hispanic youths, according to the report.
Nationally, 1,400 teens, including 400 Latinos, have taken the course this year. Although several black churches in the District offer the class, no Latino churches in the area do, coalition leaders said.
Some ministers fear the program will encourage minors to have sex, said the Rev. Penny Willis, the coalition's director of multicultural programs.
But, she said, "it's not a program that says you should tell your child to use birth control. It's a program to give your child the tools they need" to make responsible choices.
The coalition trains church members to offer the class and relies on biblical verses to spark discussion about sexual issues.
A lesson on applying spiritual context when making decisions about sexuality uses the Genesis story of Jacob's son Joseph. Sold into slavery by his brothers, he rebuffs the advances of his Egyptian master's wife.
"How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" he asks her.
The curriculum for Latino youths uses the same verses but will make reference to Latin culture instead of African American culture, said Perez, who is translating the revised curriculum into Spanish.
For example, just as the curriculum for black teens weaves in the seven principles of Kwanzaa, the African American holiday that celebrates such virtues as faith, purpose and self-determination, the Latino curriculum will celebrate cultural heroes who exhibit similar virtues.
As part of the classes, teens are supposed to ask their parents about sexuality. But students in Perez's Latino classes tell her their parents get embarrassed and often avoid the conversations.
"That's one of the reasons a large number of kids cannot get enough information about sex from their parents," Perez said. "We should not blame the parents. They never learned from their parents how to talk about it. They don't know how to start."
Grace Delgado, 18, who first took the class when she was 16, said she never could have had a discussion with her father, Diego Delgado-Miller, an Episcopal minister in New York. "He did not want to hear anything about it."
Now, she said, she has an "open dialogue" with her father about all such sensitive topics.
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