(crossposted at Amplify )

Today CNS (Cybercast News Service, formerly known as Conservative News Service) posted an article with the scary title: “Federally Funded Group Advises Teens on How to Decide if They Are Gay”.

Oh yea, and that group they are talking about is none other than those crazy cats over at Advocates for Youth (you know where I work and the group who runs this website).

To put it out front, yes, we have all kinds of amazing resources for young people about their sexual and reproductive health. As for the federal funding, as the article points out, none of it goes to our website development. You can even read the article for clarity:

According to the CDC, Advocates for Youth assists organizations through its Healthy Youth! Project “that serve African American and Latina females” to prevent HIV infections. Advocates for Youth is also part of the CDC’s “Promoting Science-Based Approaches to Prevent Teen Pregnancy” (PSBA).
 
For both programs, according to the CDC Web site, the group provides information, training, and marketing expertise to school, health clinics and other community-based organizations.

HHS’s Office of Minority Health told CNSNews.com that Advocates for Youth also received grant money over a three year period to work on “Empowering Young African/Black Women to Prevent HIV Infection” projects at historically black colleges and universities.
 
A grant abstract for this program provided to CNSNews.com said that Advocates for Youth worked with on-campus health clinics, developed a Young Women of Color council, and conducted media campaigns at Alabama A&M University, Benedict College and South Carolina State.

But in the bigger picture, I’d like to say thank you to CNS for highlighting what quite frankly is awesome work that gets done here at Advocates for Youth. What they tried to make scary actually makes us look like (in my opinion) we rock. 

I posted the article on Facebook today with the message:  "CNS News is trying to make Advocates for Youth (where I work) sound scary. But actually, I think they did a great job describing our programs and the awesome work Advocates does. Thanks, CNS!"   In the first couple of hours I had five of my friends “Like” my post and the following comments:

I LOVE the "scare quotes" throughout the piece - especially "young women of color" (yikes!) and "condoms" (horror!!) and "comprehensive" sex education (hide your children!).

The only thing worse than being disliked by CNS is being like by CNS - so major win, Advocates!

i know, they are basically advertising for us as they have really not critiqued anythng but copied stuff from our website

I had no idea you were doing this work - I think it's amazing! Congrats on getting the word out. I agree - the article made me excited about the work you do too :)

great call, Sarah... keep up the good work :)

Hahahaha!!

So if people ever ask you about what it is that we do at Advocates, aside from actually checking out our websites, I suggest you read this article. Don’t you love free publicity?
-AFY_Sarah