Choose Your Path - Puerto Rico SRAE Initiative - I. PROJECT SUMMARY Tittle: Choose Your Path - PR SRAE Initiative | Applicant: Grupo Nexos, Inc. | Address: 1353 Ave. Luis Vigoreaux, PMB 431 Guaynabo PR 00966-2715 | Telephone: 787-558-7052 | Email: gruponexos@nexospr.org | Website: https://www.nexospr.org/ Grupo Nexos, Inc. (GN), in partnership with COPAN Community Center, Inc. (COPAN), proposes a 36-month regional initiative to provide evidence-based General Departmental Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) to 1,950 youth ages 12-18 (grades 7-12) and engage at least 225 parents and caregivers in Barranquitas, Comerio, Corozal, and Naranjito, Puerto Rico. These contiguous central-mountain municipalities were selected because they combine persistent child poverty, constrained access to preventive and youth-development opportunities, and a 2025 target-area teen birth rate of 15.2 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19, compared with 11.3 in Puerto Rico and 11.7 in the United States. Choose Your Path – PR SRAE Initiative will use a community-based, developmentally appropriate approach that combines evidence-based SRAE with positive youth development, protective-factor strengthening, family engagement, and community support. Love Notes 4.2 Abstinence Only (AO) will serve as the core SRAE curriculum, providing medically accurate and age-appropriate education that promotes avoidance of nonmarital sexual activity, healthy relationships, personal responsibility, self-regulation, future planning, and the Success Sequence. Delivery for younger adolescents will follow the developer’s published middle-school recommendations while preserving curriculum fidelity. The core curriculum will be reinforced through Trusted Adult Connection and caregiver engagement activities, youth leadership opportunities, Photovoice, and community-based activities that strengthen supportive relationships and youth voice. My FRIENDS Youth will provide a distinct, complementary positive youth development and protective-factor intervention for eligible younger participants, strengthening emotional regulation, coping, resilience, problem solving, and supportive connections without replacing or being reported as SRAE curriculum instruction. Participants and families will also be connected to appropriate community resources through a structured referral network. Implementation will be led through the complementary capacities of Grupo Nexos and COPAN, combining scientific and implementation expertise with established community partnerships across the four target municipalities. GN’s Multitiered Capacity Building and Technical Assistance Framework will support facilitator preparation, fidelity, coaching, and continuous professional development, while performance monitoring and quarterly CQI will guide ongoing improvements in recruitment, participation, implementation quality, and outcomes. Together, these strategies are designed to strengthen healthy adolescent development, family and community protective factors, and young people’s capacity to make responsible decisions that support optimal health and successful transitions to adulthood. GN will provide federal award administration, implementation science, workforce development, performance measurement, data quality, and continuous quality improvement; COPAN will lead community recruitment and service delivery through its established school, municipal, faith-based, health, and youth-serving network. Expected deliverables include approximately 650 youth enrolled annually, at least 80% participant completion, at least 90% curriculum fidelity, quarterly data-informed improvement cycles, a trained local facilitator workforce, strengthened caregiver communication, and a sustainability plan. The project does not propose a separate local evaluation but agrees to collect and report all OMB-approved measures and to participate in any national evaluation if selected by FYSB.
