Empowering Tomorrow Foundation Title V Competitive Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program - Abundant Life Church (ALC) proposes a two-year Title V Competitive Sexual Risk Avoidance Education project serving 500 youth ages 10–14 in grades 6–8 at seven school and community sites in Hartford, Connecticut. The service area demonstrates elevated teen birth and sexually transmitted infection rates and substantial poverty, family, housing, mental-health, substance-use, dating-violence, and trafficking-related risk indicators. ALC will address these needs through voluntary, medically accurate and complete, age-appropriate, culturally appropriate, evidence-based sexual risk avoidance education that normalizes avoiding nonmarital sexual activity as the optimal health behavior. ALC will deliver the 13-hour Relationship Smarts Plus 5. 2 Abstinence Only curriculum with a positive youth development approach and universal education on sex and labor trafficking to 250 youth annually. The curriculum addresses all statutory A–F topics and the Success Sequence for Poverty Prevention. ALC will also administer a needs assessment to all enrolled youth, refer 100% of youth with identified needs to accessible youth-friendly services, document referrals and follow-up, provide education to 150 parents/caregivers and community leaders, and provide supplemental PYD education to 60 youth. A Youth Leadership Council and community feedback will inform implementation, CQI, and sustainability. ALC will partner with Neighborhoods to Nations for performance measurement, fidelity monitoring, data quality, reporting, and CQI. ALC agrees to collect and report all OMB-approved SRAE performance measures and participate in the national evaluation if selected. By program completion, ALC expects at least 75% of youth to demonstrate increases in intentions to delay sexual activity until marriage, self-regulation skills, skills to resist sexual coercion, and intentions to follow the Success Sequence; 85% of youth to report program satisfaction; and 80% of adult education participants to report skills and strategies to support youth. ALC requests $293,000 for the first 12-month budget period and anticipates serving the full project population within the two-year period, subject to continued funding.
