Carol Knight of West Kingston founded Heritage as a result of her work at Care Net RI, a crisis pregnancy center in Cranston. "She worked in the crisis end and wanted to work on the prevention end," explained Christopher Plante, Executive Director. "
She went out looking for curricula and funding." Knight started out in 1989 working as a volunteer at Care Net in Wakefield. She joined the staff and the new office in Cranson four and a half years ago. In her work as a counselor she saw common themes. "
The girls didn't see that they had any choices," Knight said regarding their sexual activity. "
They saw sex as a game, never thinking, 'I could get pregnant or get a sexually transmitted disease.'" She also saw many young couples "freaking out" due to an unplanned pregnancy.
That led Knight on a bigger quest - to convince teens they did have a choice - to abstain. "People never talked to them about abstinence. Abstinence was foreign to the kids." She thought, "There's got to be a way to change the culture."
That change started with a committee of others devoted to the cause and a search for an existing program. At the time she thought, "I am sure someone's out there and doing it well. I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel." Knight found Heritage of South Carolina, with the curriculum she wanted and also looking to expand. "
They had already been doing it and were successful." Kids who had gone through the school programs were waiting longer to have sex and "not just jumping in." A federal grant for $1.2-million dollars seeded Heritage of Rhode Island, the first and only organization working on the abstinence issue in the state.
Educating teenagers in a positive way about healthy choices, especially sexual abstinence, has become the main message and focus of Heritage. Of the positive message, Knight said, "That is what I love about the curriculum.
Scaring them doesn't work...
The scare thing doesn't work." Another key part of Heritage's message is about protecting public health.Plante says there are 10,000 people infected with sexually transmitted diseases every day in the United States.
- That's 3.75 million people a year.
"It's a hidden epidemic." The diseases include
genital herpes, human papilloma virus, syphilis, AIDS, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. For viral diseases, such as herpes and papilloma viruses, "you can only treat the symptoms," said Plante. Twenty percent of Americans over the age of 11 are infected with genital herpes.
Chlamydia is asymptomatic and "kids don't know they have it and pass it on. Three to four cases in a female can result in infertility." Sexually transmitted diseases are also costly. In 2003, $24-million was spent in Rhode Island on treatment, said Plante. "
- The healthiest choice any teenager can make is abstinence," said Plante.
He, like Knight, doesn't think teaching fear is useful. "Fear doesn't work as a deterrent, particularly for teens. They think they are immortal. We are not trying to scare them but give them a positive message to abstain."
Heritage focuses on teens' self worth and making responsible choices that give them the brightest future. In their school programs and after school programs, they ask students "What do you want to do with your life?
And where do you want to be in ten years?" Heritage also has programs for parents called Parents Make The Difference that are held in schools, churches, and various locales around the state. In response to last year's sexual incident in the back of a bus on a Narragansett school trip, Heritage offered a Parents Make A Difference Workshop at the Holiday Inn.
"Parents are the number one influence on kids," said Plante. Knight said that kids "want to be able to bring up questions and concerns with their parents. Parents have given up on issues but research shows that kids want to know what parents think."
Besides encouraging parents to talk to their teens, Heritage works to motivate parents in other ways, like pushing to get the Heritage curricula into the schools. "I know there are parents interested in getting this in the schools down here [South County].
A lot of administrators know it's a problem but they don't want to stick their neck out." "We are a little bit surprised we've seen such resistance from the people that make decisions. They are hesitant to jump on board" even when their school staff may be telling them it's a great thing, explained Knight. Even with teenagers' raging hormones, "it's not out of the realm of possibility to control those urges through tools, encouragement, and support," said Plante.
He wants abstaining teens to feel they are strong and have the ability to choose, rather than feel that something is wrong with them. "We want to start a new sexual revolution called abstinence," said Plante.
Heritage has found that a large percentage of eighth and ninth grade students haven't had sexual intercourse and if they have, they don't want to or they want to stop. What started out as an ad hoc committee that Carol Knight pulled together is now a bustling office with an executive director, an office manager, and four educators.
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