Sometimes it's hard to feel connected to the change you aim to make and the people who your work affects when you're working "inside the beltway" in Washington, DC. But at the beginning of the summer I joined several other Campaigners on a trip up to New Britain, CT, for a conference that we hosted with a local teen pregnancy prevention organization. The agenda of the conference was designed to draw the connection between what we do at a national level, what Connecticut in particular is doing, and the youth that is served by this specific teen pregnancy prevention program in New Britain - Pathways/Senderos.

While all the information presented was informative and interesting - we learned about how programs are evaluated; specifics about the Carrera program model; how the National Campaign was started and its dedication to poverty reduction; and about some other interesting programs in Connecticut - I think that everyone agreed that the best part of the conference was seeing the program staff, their successful kids and the kids' parents talk about what this type of program means for their lives and their prospects for the future. I made the video below to share a part of that experience, so that we can all better understand the kids that this work serves and the successes that they experience as a result.

As you can see in the video, the conference in Connecticut served another important purpose: to unveil a new publication that we created with the Pathways/Senderos teens on teen pregnancy prevention. The pamphlet is designed for Latino teens, with stories written by Latino teens, to help foster an understanding of the experiences in their lives that shape their decisions on sex and their ability to make decisions about the future. It's designed to use with Latino teens to help start discussions, and includes some tips that can help them make safe, smart decisions about sex. You can download a copy from our website and check it out, or you can order it from our store to use with youth in your community.

To supplement the stories that we gathered at Pathways/Senderos, we're also asking for your stories. If you're a Latino teen, or if you work with Latino teens, please visit our MySpace blog and share your thoughts. We're trying to get the conversation started about how Latino teens think and talk about their sexual decisions, and we'd love to hear from you.

This piece is cross-posted on the Latino Initiative's MySpace profile.

Approximately once a month the Latino Initiative's MySpace blog will feature a young person who is doing exceptional things and waiting to start a family. Our first Jóven del mes was a Hispanic College Fund scholar named Brenda Lopez who is the first in her family to go to college. We hope you'll take a moment to read Brenda's post and that you'll check out February's Jóven del mes entry featuring our very own Youth Leadership Team member Laurisa Rodrigues.

Do you know any special jóvenes we could feature in future months? If so, have them contact Ruthie Flores or Liz Sabatiuk for more information. 

Forget for a moment all the important topics churned up by the Palin pregnancy story (topics like reproductive freedom, abstinence-only education, the family turmoil that often comes from too-early parenthood, the idea of teen marriage, the impact this may or may not have on voters and the GOP ticket, and oh, the future that awaits this and the other 400,000+ babies who will be born to teen moms this year) and think for a moment about poor Bristol Palin whose life as she knows it is pretty much over.

Not only has her mom had to publicly address her personal life (as a former teenage girl I cringe at the memory of my own mother discussing anything having to do with my social life) but pretty much everyone else in the country is talking about it too. She's going to marry her high school boyfriend (whose MySpace page reportedly said he doesn't want kids). She has to become a parent, to a living, breathing, human being who may indeed give her unconditional love but who will certainly require that same unconditional love by his or her parents. And she'll do it all in the public eye.

Like it or not Bristol Palin is now the poster child for teen pregnancy in the U.S. Jamie Lynn's a mother now, those Gloucester girls likely didn't have a pact at all, and Juno MacGuff is so last year. So now it's Bristol. And if there's a bright side to all this it's that it's now getting harder and harder to say that teen pregnancy happens to other people, to people from bad families, to people in poverty, to people in Hollywood, to people who live in public housing (although the Alaska governor's residence probably qualifies on a technicality), to people who aren't "like me."

Because teen pregnancy can happen to anyone (anyone having sex as a teenager that is).  It happens to nearly one-third of American girls (and those girls aren't pregnant by themselves). And it is totally preventable—either don't have sex or use protection consistently and carefully every single time. Which is actually the most important topic of all.