Teen STAR News

Winter 2011-12
Teen STAR Program, 4400 East West Highway, # 911, Bethesda, MD 20814-4510, USA Phone 301-897-9323, hannaklaus@earthlink.net, www.teenstarprogram.org

Seventh International Teen STAR Congress 2012, Seoul, Korea

Registrations
Cost $ 50/night. A registration brochure will be sent to you separately. Gloria Hahm, one of Teen STAR Korea's volunteers who has lived in Canada and is fluent in English will handle all international registrations: krhahm@yahoo.com, or kteenstar@hotmail.com

Provisional Agenda
August 11th: August 12th: Arrival and check in Country reports 20-30 minutes each Please send the reports, power point, etc. to Hanna by August 1, 2012 (hannaklaus@earthlink.net) with a copy to Gloria Hahm (see above). Discussion of problems encountered in each country Display of support materials used by different countries Presentation of curriculum for younger children (Elisabeth Pesahl) This day would be particularly devoted to the Korean teachers Annual meeting of Korean teachers including scientific updates Optional: sightseeing tour for expatriates Celebration of the Feast of the Assumption Review of the following organizational aspects: training, minimum requirements, compliance issues, legal aspects for TeenSTAR Elections for the Executive Committee who will elect the officers Closing of meeting and departures Note: we can stay in the retreat house the night of Aug. 15th.

August 13th:

August 14th:

August 15th:

Teen STAR News, Winter 2011-12

News from our programs (unedited)

[Abstracting the wonderful letters we receive would lose the writer's individuality hence I have opted to leave the originals even though it makes for more reading. Ed]

Chile I will try to summarize January 2012: We have finished a period of 6 weeks of training Teen STAR monitors all around the country and in Santiago. We have been able to form 7 teams of trainers, many of whom you know: Anita, Pepe, Susana, Manuel and others who are now able to train monitors. As you may remember from this year on sexuality teaching is obligatory for the whole country, so many schools asked for Teen STAR who is one of the seven official programs of the government. We were able to train about 800 teachers during these six weeks in many different courses between 12 and 90 people each. (one was for the Salesians, who have picked Teen STAR as their program!) The main course, as we have done for the last years, took place at the Catholic University. The rector came to say hello to the people and also we had a Mass celebrated by our "vice grand chancellor". As we are having a big impact in the country our stock has risen in the university's estimate. Fr. Jos Victor came from Spain and helped us, is becoming involved also in programs in Italy, Spain, Brasil, Argentina, Chile and the rest of Latin America. He is also helping with the teaching and developing new materials together with us. We have been able to develop a child curriculum as schools needed to have one according to the new law. Our little office is working quite well, we have small but reasonable facilities and are able to support a teacher, a midwife and a secretary. Miguel (del Rio, Pilar's husband) organized our office in the last four months especially finances, general coordination and an electronic data base to facilitate follow-up. In February I leave for the PAV (Pontifical Academy for Life) where I will give a paper on the importance of fertility awareness. Then we will have workshops at the universities in Milan, Cordoba and a post workshop training in Valencia. Brasil will start up in May. Jos Victor will go with me to Rome and to Milan, also to Brasil. Pilar Vigil

Canada In Edmonton, Alberta, one of the new teachers (one of the French training session) is beginning with a group of grade 8-9 girls in January. In December, while we were in Edmonton for our ministry, I spent time with her to help her get ready for the parents meeting, the girls meeting and the first Unit. We also keep in touch by phone. I am thrilled to experience for the first time this mutual support: we will begin with our grade 8 at the French school here in Regina at the same time (and probably almost same pace). In St.Therese Institute (in Bruno, Saskatchewan), which is a School of Faith and Evangelization, one of the couple who took the training session last June started the Holistic Sexuality curriculum with the young men and women attending the 9-month program of the Institute. It is now included in their year of formation as a regular curriculum! So far, the eighteen young adults are very thrilled and appreciative. I will meet with these teachers in February but already stay in touch with them to support them. They dream, just like I do, of offering a training session (at the end of their year at St. Therese) to the students who would be interested to give the program in their own area. We will see how it turns... With all our gratitude and affection, we keep you in our daily prayer. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A BLESSED NEW YEAR! Sister Rene (Crepeau of the Myriam Family)

Uganda / Ethiopia The Teen STAR PEPFAR-NPI USAID funded project will end September 2012. As the last active Round 1 NPI partners we participated at the End of Project Meeting held in Kampala, Uganda January 12-13. Sister Theresa Kengyero and Paddy Lutaayi from Teen STAR Uganda, Abel Muse and Desta Yohans from Teen STAR ECS and Hanna Klaus attended. A site visit to TSU followed.

Teen STAR News, Winter 2011-12

Teen STAR Ethiopia Exhibit at End of (PEPFAR-NPI) Project meeting Kampala, with Desta Yohans.

TSU exhibit at EOP. Paddy Lutaaya, Annett Nkasi and Florence Mukwaya. Kampala.

Trainer training group, Mushanga, Uganda Jan. 2012 3

Teen STAR News, Winter 2011-12 Ethiopia Creating Partnerships With ECS Laity and Family Unit to Prevent Early Marriage, Which curtails girls' future in Amhara region, by enhancing Teen STAR program. In advance Bahir Dar Pastoral Territory Catholic Secretariat would like to extend its sincere appreciation and precious thanks for ECS family and Laity unit and founder of Teen STAR program. Ethiopian Catholic Church Laity and family unit has started a Teen STAR program in Bahir Dar Pastoral Territory Catholic Secretariat, which is one of the Dioceses in Ethiopia. The program has created a conducive situation for youth and created a motivation in them in order to prevent themselves as well as their peers from being affected by Natural and social influence during Adult age. Some of the participants, who have faced some challenges temptations during their adult hood, expressed that they could have helped themselves as well as their peers, if they were educated/introduced with this program before. No matter how the past generation didn't benefit from this program, it is not late to save the future generation. The participants have also appreciated the founder of the program for taking initiation to establish such a Golden program, to save innocent lives and create healthy and productive individual, family and society in entire world. Current situation of HTPs in Amhara Region In the Amhara regional state of Ethiopia, 50 percent of girls are married before the age of 15. Many are betrothed even earlier and sent to live with their future husband's Family by the age of nine or ten. Early marriage is one of many harmful traditional Practices that is particularly prevalent in rural areas, along with female genital cutting, abduction, and unattended births. The effects of early marriage are devastating. Girls married young suffer major disadvantages physically, emotionally, economically, and socially. According to the information we acquired from Bahir Dar Hamilin fistula Hospital many girls in Amhara Region face the complications of early marriage every day. Medically speaking, these girls are not well grown. During an obstructed labor the girl will labor for three to four days before the family brings her in, at which point the fetus is usually dead and the birth canal is often atrophied and torn. Girls married early are at greater risk for reproductive health complications and gender-based violence, including marital rape, sexually transmitted infections and HIV, obstructed labor, and obstetric fistula. Due to exploitation and domination by their older husbands and in-laws, they are not able to 4 create supportive social or economic networks through family or friends, are more likely to get divorced or abandoned at a young age, and are more likely to run away from home and become exposed to risky behavior in the cities, including prostitution. They do not complete their schooling and thus are more likely to grow impoverished and suffer from malnutrition. Schools/Girls' Clubs After being given an adequate training by ECS Teen STAR program coordinators Girls' clubs in schools are organized to educate girls on early marriage, harmful traditional practices, reproductive health, and other life skills. The students act as peer educators and as a support network for girls who are suffering from Fistula in Bahir Dar Hospital and trying to mobilize the community to fight against HTPs (Harmful traditional practices), provide necessary counseling and peer education for adults on How to introduce the advantages of Billings Ovulation Method (BOM) in schools and universities. Therefore Bahir Dar Pastoral Territory has considered the gravest necessity of Teen STAR program and has a plan to enhance collaboration with ECS Family and Laity Unit at grass root levels to prevent early marriage through extensive advocacy efforts and Awareness Creation Training. Berhanu Fikadu (Bahir Dar Pastoral Territory Catholic Secretariat)

France We had a good board meeting last Friday at Christian's home. 18 of us in all. I am lost in admiration of the quality of our members most of them teachers also. The program is spreading beautifully as you must know from our excellent president. Agns Bouffard (whom you trained years ago in Avignon) has been doing wonders is on her bishop's council, etc. In answer to a horrible promotion of contraception launched by Sgolne Royal (a Socialist "would-be" candidate for the French presidency who fortunately was eliminated) gives young people a "Pass Contraception" with chques to buy the contraceptives and pay for the doctor this costs the taxpayer 140 p/p. Agns, and the Grenoble diocese, have launched a neat brochure called "Pass Amour" with all the right answers for teenagers in their search for love, a good website they can consult, etc. It is spreading nicely through various associations and all our teachers. Angela de Malherbe, Jan. 16, 2012, demalherbe@spamarrest.com

Teen STAR News, Winter 2011-12

How an we promote now the message of Familiaris Consortio?

Angela de Malherbe, first President of CEPP (Teen STAR France) presented this paper at the November 2011 Plenary meeting of the Pontifical Council for the Family. The message of FC is ever more urgent. The almost two million young people at the WYD in Madrid showed the thirst they have for spiritual values and responsible living. Modern culture as transmitted by the media does not respond to their basic needs as human persons. FC concerns the gift of love and life. It is a spiritual message and a practical message. In FC N 13 we read exerpts from JP II 's speech to members of the CLER (a French organisation which promotes marriage and NFP) on November 3, 1979. Conjugal love, he reminded them, is a communion of two persons, man and woman, it represents the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ and the Alliance between God and Humanity. He strongly insisted that conjugal love includes the totality of all the aspects of the person: the body and the instincts, the strength of emotions, sentiments and affectivity, the aspirations of the intellect (the spirit) and the will. This is in keeping with the profound unity of the person which enables the spouses, beyond the fact of becoming one flesh, to become one heart and one spirit. Conjugal love demands a permanent, faithful and unbreakable commitment in a definitive reciprocal giving of man and woman one to the other, and it is open to the transmission of life as described in HV N 9. In FC N 33, JP II insists on the importance of knowing and accepting one's body, and its biological rhythms. We must do all we can, he said, to make this knowledge available to all married couples, and above all to young people, by means of a precise and serious education, given by couples, doctors and experts. The gender ideology and the anti-life mentality show us that JP II's teaching urges us today to re-integrate procreation within human sexuality, so that conjugal love no longer separates union and procreation. It has been proven that young people become responsible when they accept these realities. A practical, scientifically sound

teaching of NFP which protects the transmission of life, and deepens conjugal love is a major task for us. This seems to be done more concretely in the developing countries (i.e. Mexico, South American countries, Africa) and in the US, where many bishops and priests have affirmed that it is a preachable subject, and where the brochure for preparation for marriage Married Love & the Gift of Life insists that engaged couples should learn NFP before they are married, explaining clearly the enormous difference between contraception and the natural regulation of human fertility. This message must be given in homilies and study groups, but even more urgently to young adolescents who are enthusiastic to hear it. Girls become real women when they become familiar with their fertility which is the basis of womanhood. This is the real empowerment of women as it should be proclaimed in the New Christian Feminism of our time. Women are protected from the harmful effects of contraception, and the anti-life mentality. Couples become the owners of their fundamental right to choose the time of conception of their children, without outside coertion from medical or government authorities. The TeenSTAR program, which is now taught in over 40 countries on the five continents, has been recognized by Catholic Bishops and professional educators as an efficient training for young people, helping them to learn the beauty of their sexuality. (Research and statistics confirming this have been published by specialists including Professor Pilar Vigil, gynecologist and endocrinologist in the American Journal of Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology: 2006, 19:173-179, 18(1):212) TeenSTAR is also acclaimed as being an efficient antidote to AIDS, by many people who work in Africa for example, and by Professor Edward Green, medical anthropologist, who heads the department of research on AIDS at Harvard University. Let us therefore actively promote the message of Familiaris Consortio, with practical and widespread teaching of Christian anthropology and NFP.