(hell, yeah) Scarleteen

Scarleteen is one of the world’s most respected and valued resources for sexuality education, both online and offline. We play a very important role in the lives of young people.

In 2012, as is typical for us most years, we served more than five million people internationally, most between the ages of 16 and 21.

We helped them navigate emotions, desires and pressures they faced. We helped them have better sex and healthier relationships. We helped them prevent unintended pregnancies. We helped them heal from assault and abuse. We helped them to better understand their bodies, their hearts and their minds, and helped them to better care for all of those parts of who they are. We helped them come out to parents and friends, and to better communicate with many different people in their lives about sex and sexuality. We helped them get through hard times, and helped them become even more amazing than they already are. We helped them through their adolescence and emerging adulthood, particularly around one of those most complex parts of both: their sexuality.

We were here for them, and want to remain here for them. But to make that happen, we need you to be here for us.

We served those five million young people last year, in all of those ways and more, on a budget of $45,000. Not four and a half million dollars. Not four hundred and fifty thousand. Just forty-five thousand dollars.

For every dollar we had to work with, we helped more than a hundred people. Most accessed the thousands of pieces of accessible, original, progressive content in our archives.  Some talked with us directly, asking one question and getting one, sometimes life-changing, answer. Others engaged with us in conversations, based on their expressed needs, for days, weeks or months. (Some we’ve been talking with for years.) Some used our message boards or other channels to get peer support, having conversations about sensitive subjects in a safe space. Some use our growing database to find in-person services, or got a personal referral to in-person services they needed from us via our direct services. Some benefit from the face-to-face outreach we do. Some use what we offer on our social media channels to interact and expand their sexuality education, or to find other credible, reliable places to explore these topics. We’re sure many will now also use our new live service to connect with us for help in 2013.

We also served fellow educators, healthcare providers, parents and other youth allies and advocates with information and support they needed to work with and support youth themselves. Scarleteen remains, as it has been since we first started in the late nineties, a widely acclaimed example of ongoing excellence in sex education.

And we did all of that at a total cost of less than a penny for each person we served. That’s an incredible feat, and we’re pretty proud of ourselves for doing it, particularly since it makes us the most cost-effective sexuality education and support service for young people — maybe for people of any age — there is.

As impressive as it is, we can’t go on this way forever. Our current budget doesn’t give us the stability we need to keep going at this level, and it certainly doesn’t give us the ability to grow in the ways that the young people we serve need us to.

That’s where you come in.

Click here to read the rest of this important fundraising appeal from us.

As we mention in the appeal, we not only know that most of our young users and readers don’t have the means to donate, we don’t think you should have to.  We feel essential health information like we offer should be free for young people.  But if you can give, we could use your help. If you can’t, just doing what you can to help get our appeal far and wide is a great way to pitch in for Scarleteen right now. Sliding this into the hands of an older adult or two — or more! — who you know cares about young people and their sexual well-being could wind up getting us exactly what we need, so you can keep getting what you need from us. Thanks! :)