Project Ascend: Healthy Relationships, Resilience, and Positive Futures for Youth - PRO Youth & Families, Inc. (PRO Youth) brings more than 40 years of experience partnering with youth, families, schools, and communities throughout Greater Sacramento to create opportunities for young people to learn, grow, and thrive. Building on its established positive youth development approach and experience delivering youth-centered prevention programming, PRO Youth proposes the Ascend Project, a prevention-focused Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) initiative serving 360 youth annually, ages 10–18, for a total of 720 youth over the two-year project period. Ascend will prioritize communities where additional supports and protective factors can strengthen youth well-being, healthy development, and future stability. Grounded in the evidence-based REAL Essentials curriculum, Ascend will use Starting Point for youth ages 10–14 and Advanced for youth ages 14–18 to provide developmentally appropriate SRAE. Programming will strengthen communication, boundary setting, self-regulation, healthy decision-making, and relationship skills while reinforcing the benefits of delaying sexual activity. Through positive youth development and future-focused activities, participants will also explore goals related to education, employment, relationships, and adulthood and connect the choices they make today with the future they want to create. Ascend will be implemented through partnerships with schools, community-based organizations, and other youth-serving institutions across Greater Sacramento. Through the integration of evidence-based SRAE with PRO Youth’s established youth development practices, Ascend will strengthen protective factors that support healthy relationships, responsible decision-making, resilience, future orientation, and greater family and economic stability as youth transition into adulthood.
