Sex Ed is Our Right

Between November 2017 and March 2018, YouthCO HIV & Hep C Society (YouthCO) has connected with more than 600 youth across BC through focus groups and an online survey to hear what they have to say about the sex ed curriculum, and what they’d like to see change. We visited six cities, and our survey was answered by youth in 83 cities and towns. This project emerged from a conversation at a Safer Schools Working Group meeting hosted at the Community-Based Research Centre for Gay Men’s Health (CBRC). This group included youth and adults invested in sex ed across British Columbia, and took place on March 31st 2017. The consensus from the meeting was that the sex ed in schools throughout British Columbia is not working for all LGBTQ+/2S youth. From the priority actions devised, YouthCO initiated a provincial sex ed curriculum review with a focus on connecting with LGBTQ+/2S youth currently in high schools.

YouthCO hired two queer young adults to speak with high school aged youth across the province about their experience with sex ed, including the curriculum, how it is being delivered, classroom experiences, and what they are learning. At the core of the project was listening to the voices of youth as agents and leaders of change in our schools and communities. To do this, YouthCO invited participants from all health authorities, and hosted a total of six focus groups and reached 556 youth in our online survey.

This report is part of the ongoing process of bringing youth voices to this table Here, we will outline what we did, who we spoke with, and what we heard from high school students. We received a lot of information and exciting ideas from the youth we spoke to, and the results shared in this report reflect key themes that came up in the focus groups and the survey and in which there was consensus. There are so many more ideas that youth want to contribute to what sex ed looks like across British Columbia than what we are able to capture here: for us, this report is part of the ongoing process of bringing youth voices to this table. As we continue this conver- sation about what sex ed looks like in British Columbia, we will carry the feedback we heard forward.