Jackson County Center Receives Help from Camp Awestruck

Before Picture of the Center

After Picture of the Center

The Jackson County Pregnancy Care Center was recently blessed when two groups of high school students from Awestruck, a summer camp held at Camp Lakeview, spent four days painting our new Center. The Seymour Tribune Newspaper wrote an article on the group and the help they provided the ministry. You can view that article here. We are grateful for the beautiful servant's hearts of these young people and impact their service made on making the outside of the Center a more inviting place for clients to want to visit!

Is a Sexual Integrity Program for 6th Graders REALLY Necessary?

Perhaps the answer to this question can best be found among the anonymous feedback forms collected from the 8^th grade Choose to Wait program last year:

• 13 year old, Bartholomew County Student: “She answered every question that I was thinking about.”
• 14 year old, Brown County Student: “I might have had sex before, but me and my b.f. talked and we want to wait…”
• Unidentified Jennings County Student: “I wish I would have had a chance to hear all this a long time ago.”
• Unidentified Jennings County Middle School student: “I am glad she said what she said before I would have messed up.”

Our culture and media has bombarded children with a great deal of sexual imagery and dysfunctional ideas about relationships and romantic expectations. For the past 18 years, the Pregnancy Care Center’s Choose to Wait (CTW) program has teamed with educators to expose the misinformation students believe, and reveal and empower the precious truth of their inherent value and worth when it comes to their sexuality.

The Pregnancy Care Center recently designed a CTW program for 6^th graders. Some question whether it is necessary to talk with this age-group about such topics. CTW 6^th grade is a preventative program with a goal of reaching adolescents prior to them engaging in relationships so they have a foundation of truth to build upon. It is essential that young students receive engaging, factual information to address the issue of living a life of sexual integrity and are given permission to buck the social trends and value them-selves. The CTW 6^th grade program gives students factual, age-appropriate information and tools to identify trusted adults in their lives that can assist them in maneuvering through a time filled with innocent confusion and many questions.

We are proud to be a positive voice offering factual information and preventative tools for young students to address their health in not only a physical perspective; but a mental, emotional, social and ethical perspective as well.

It isn’t just necessary, it is healthy, good and right to take back territory on a topic the world has exploited for far too long! We owe it to our children to guide them through puberty with truth, dignity, respect, and encouragement that there is beauty and excitement on the other side of this unique time in their lives.

Tracey Pike, Choose to Wait Educator