For Immediate Release
Media Advisory
April 10, 2007
Ontario Trillium Foundation,
Peer Parent Leaders in Family Sexual Education:
Asian Community AIDS Service, Toronto Public Health &
7 community agencies
WHAT Raising Sexually Healthy Children Peer Parent
Leadership Training: a community mobilization program which is
funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation is hosting its Peer
Leader Graduation Ceremony.
The Raising Sexually Healthy Children Peer Parent Leadership
Training project was organized and implemented by the Ethno-specific
Family Sex Education Peer Parent Leader Coalition which consists
of 9 agencies: Asian Community AIDS Services , Bloor Life &
Information Skills Centre, Immigrant Women’s Health Centre,
Korean Canadian Women’s Association Family & Social
Services, South Asian Women’s Centre, St Joseph’s
Health Centre - Women’s Health Centre, St Stephen’s
Community House, Toronto Public Health, and Vietnamese Association
Toronto.
WHO The Hon. George Smitherman
MPP Toronto Centre
Saira Zuberi
Ontario Trillium Foundation representative
Liz Janzen
Toronto Public Health, Healthy Living Director
WHERE Council Chamber
North York Civic Centre
5100 Yonge Street
(On west side of Yonge Street & 5 blocks north of Sheppard
Avenue)
North York,
Ontario, M2N 5V7
WHEN Saturday, April 14, 2007
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
The Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Ministry of
Culture, receives funding from government’s charity casino
initiative.
MORE DETAILS:
From August to December 2006, a total of 89 peer parent leaders
from the Bengali, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil
and Vietnamese communities were trained to promote family sex
education and parent-child communication to their respective communities.
These peer parent leaders have delivered 340 hours of outreach
workshops to over 1,000 parents within their communities. The
Raising Sexually Healthy Children Project effectively supplements
school-based sexual health education that children receive. Peer
parent leaders will not only acquire correct information and attitudes
for raising sexually healthy children but will also acquire new
skills in learning how to facilitate workshops that include aspects
of adult education, program planning, and project coordination
and management with the long term impact of building the capacity
and creating safer environments within ethno cultural communities.
Research has demonstrated that parents and family interactions
have substantial influences on the development of positive self-esteem
among children. Moreover, they also influence children’s
adoption of gender roles and sexual values. Family sex education
and open communication benefit both parents and their children:
they facilitate the development of positive and trusting relationships
in the family; they support children in developing self-confidence;
they help children in recognizing inappropriate sexual advances
and provide them with the language to talk about this difficult
and confusing topic with their parents or other adults they trust.
In addition to sexual abuse prevention, open communication about
human sexuality and positive messaging about sexual health provided
to children in their early years help build towards a healthy
foundation for sexuality development.
Using a community capacity building framework, this peer-driven
project utilizes the existing strengths of the seven communities
by focusing on the parents’ knowledge, experiences and passion
to create a better and safer community for children to grow up
in. The project is exceptional in that parents from different
cultures and backgrounds were brought together to work towards
a common goal. Upon graduation, these trained peer leaders will
work in teams to reach out to other parents in their communities
through the use of workshops, discussion groups, parenting resources,
the media and other local initiatives to raise awareness about
the importance of family sex education and community participation.
The upcoming graduation ceremony will honour the leadership initiative
these peer parents have shown and provide a glimpse of the power
of “common vision” and “collaboration”.
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