Community-Based Organizations

The following isms impact the role, policy advocacy, and practices of community-based organizations: capitalism, classism, ableism, adultism, racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, and transphobia. This is not an exhaustive list. Visit the isms blog series to learn more.

These anti-oppressive recommendations are a starting point for partners across sectors to convene conversations to learn from one another, build awareness for anti-oppressive initiatives happening within the youth sexual health field, discuss opportunities for collaboration, and engage in action planning.

Building Awareness Across Initiatives

If you are leading an initiative or practice that is in alignment with the recommendations shared below, we want to hear about it, and would love to discuss how to elevate your work through this website or with partners.

If you would like a partner to explore and discuss these recommendations with, please contact Trailhead’s Youth Sexual Health Program team to connect.

  • Community advocacy and the creation of community-based organizations has always been an important part of sexual health and sex education. In 1916, Margaret Sanger, Ethel Byrn, and Fania Mindel opened the country’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Sanger went on to start what became Planned Parenthood. Sanger advocated for sex education and contraception at a time when it was considered obscene to talk about it and even criminalized in some places. Sanger advocated for birth control at all costs and aligned with thinking of the time related to the eugenics movement, which discouraged reproduction by people with mental or physical disabilities and later was used to justify sterilization, particularly among Black people. Sanger, like so many, has a complicated history and a messy life with regards to advancing women’s liberation and racism and ableism.

    Today community-based organizations continue to play important roles in sex education such as advocating for policy change locally and nationally, teaching sexual health education in schools, providing after school programming focused on sexual health, and many others.

Recommendations for Anti-Oppressive Action

    • Advocate with curriculum developers and national partners (SIECUS and others) to include topics like: how to advocate with a doctor, how to say no, and teaching that you can use discernment with what you are told by professionals.

    • Acknowledge that there are lots of young people, particularly youth with disabilities, who end up in these systems.

    • Identify and fund youth engagement strategies that are youth led to advocate for sex education.

    • Leverage the existing Youth Sexual Health Alliance space to more intentionally coordinate with organizations that serve communities that have been targeted by oppression.

      • Note: As facilitators of the Youth Sexual Health Alliance, Trailhead Institute is heeding this recommendation in 2023.

    • Ensure community organizations are truly coordinating and not competing for funding. Develop accountability metrics to enhance coordination within the sexual health nonprofit field.

      • Partner with funders to address gaps, incentivize partnerships, and change funding behaviors that create a scarcity mindset.

      • Make it clear who does what and where resources are located.

      • Partner with university community engagement offices, who have funding to support community-based organizations to support student services.

    • Create a list of competent doctors who perform sexual health services.

    • Enhance existing Alliance Youth Sexual Health resource map to intentionally center communities that have been targeted by oppression. Use this to identify gaps and support community-led solutions to address gaps. This will require intentional community building.

      • Ensure that resources are accessible.

      • Ensure that resources are quality for those made vulnerable by oppressive systems, which will benefit everyone.

      • Assign responsibility for upkeep and accountability for the resource list.

      • Develop a process to report a negative experience.

      • Note: As contributors to the Youth Sexual Health Resource Map, Trailhead Institute is heeding this recommendation in 2023.

Taking Action Through Partnership

Shifting the culture of youth sexual health and transforming the delivery of comprehensive sex education is possible when we work collaboratively across systems and in partnership with communities and young people.