Healthy Girls, Powerful Women, Strong Communities | Spring Initiative

The proposed project – Healthy Girls, Powerful Women, Strong Communities – will build on the impactful work Spring has established in the last 8 years while further enhancing its effectiveness. The intervention efforts Spring students receive on a daily and long-term basis are designed to provide them with access to opportunity, a vision for a positive future, access to preventive health care services, and high-quality sex education, regardless of what obstacles they are facing. Spring provides regular, evidence-based sex education across all ages to ensure that students understand for themselves why it is important to value and protect their bodies, and feel confident in defining and maintaining the boundaries they choose to set for themselves.

Spring Initiative will:

• Ensure that Junior Spring and Big Spring students benefit from the evidence-based “Making Proud Choices!” sexual and reproductive health curriculum, demonstrating increased self-awareness and self-confidence as a result of their participation in the sessions, particularly as it relates to their choices around sexual activities.
• Provide high-quality, bi-weekly boys and girls time at Junior and Big Spring to bring about growth in areas such as self-esteem, understanding and valuing of boundaries, motivation to invest in one’s future, etc.
• Provide consistent individual support to students around areas of sexual and reproductive health, including one-on-one conversations, referrals, and offering logistical support.
• Thirty-five (35) Spring students will benefit from therapy on a weekly basis, 20 of whom are girls, and students will be able to access group therapy whenever needed to help resolve any conflicts or difficult situations at a cohort or small group level.
• Ensure that Mini Spring and Little Spring students benefit from the evidence-based “Promoting Health!” relationship-building and boundary-setting curriculum, demonstrating increased self-awareness and self-confidence as a result of their participation in the sessions.