With help from Vashon’s domestic violence awareness organization, six Vashon High School students are taking on the responsibility of educating their peers about sexual health and relationships through a Planned Parenthood program called Teen Council.

After years of brainstorming with with the Vashon Island School District (VISD) about the program and how it could be created, The DoVE Project — which aims to assist domestic violence survivors and raise awareness of the issue — recently sent its two Teen Council Facilitators to Washington, DC for the first-ever Teen Council Summit. There, facilitators Kyle Britz and Tracy McLaren joined 150 Teen Council peer educators and 68 other Teen Council facilitators to meet with legislative staff and lobby for reproductive justice legislation.

“It was great for us to see these Teen Councils in action and see the presentations. They were amazing,” McLaren said. “It was incredible to see these teens walk into these legislative offices and speak so articulately. You could tell they’re going to be really, really powerful leaders one day.”

Armed with the information from the summit, Britz and McLaren have begun working with the six VHS 10th, 11th and 12th graders who were recruited in the spring for the island’s Teen Council. The six will attend a retreat later this month to establish a foundation of knowledge before participating in weekly trainings throughout the year — a total of 65 hours — that will teach them about sexual health and relationship issues and how to teach their peers.

According to Planned Parenthood, Teen Council peer educators teach fellow students about topics such as HIV/AIDS, harassment, healthy relationships, delaying sex, family communication and multicultural awareness through “accurate and unbiased sexuality information.” However, the council’s lessons go beyond sexual education, McLaren said.

“They cover diversity, racism, domestic violence, consent, far more than sex ed.,” she said.

DoVE Project Executive Director Betsey Archambault said that the peer-to-peer education is crucial for the hard-to-discuss topics.

“Teens are more comfortable talking to peers than to adults. Did you want to go talk to your mom about healthy sexuality when you were a teen? You’d probably rather die than have to do that,” she said. “Throughout the teenage years, misinformation spreads so easily. As soon as one person gets the wrong information, everyone else does.”

In fact, according to the 2015 Youth Risk Behavioral Survey, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 41 percent of high school-age students reported having had sexual intercourse and 30 percent reported being sexually active. Of those currently sexually active, nearly 14 percent reported using no form of birth control, and less than 58 percent reported condom usage.

“Although teen pregnancy rates nationally are trending downward, sex education remains an unspeakable subject in our culture, and many schools don’t provide it,” Archambault said.

VHS and McMurray Middle School students do receive sexual education at school. The Teen Council will not replace established courses, but will be an additional resource for students.

Vashon’s council is also making history, as it is the first Teen Council to be organized not by Planned Parenthood, but by a local organization. Run by DoVE’s facilitators in partnership with the high school’s health educators, the program is a first and will serve as a pilot to see if the model is possible elsewhere. Initial training is being funded with a $10,000 grant given to the Vashon Island School District (VISD) from the CDC a few years ago. After the training is complete, all costs incurred will be covered by DoVE.

“It’s a partnership,” Archambault said. “DoVE is the very first organization to develop a Teen Council through Planned Parenthood. The very first. There are many Teen Councils in the U.S. and all of them are run by Planned Parenthood staff. Usually, Planned Parenthood creates one (council) for every district with one or two teens from every school.”

Because of the size of Vashon and because the district only has one high school, the council was not only formed differently, but will also work differently.

“We are working closely with the school district to see how it will look in our community,” she said. “Many Teen Councils travel around and do presentations on HIV, reproductive health and anatomy and teen pregnancy, but we don’t know if these teens will want to get up and make big presentations about this stuff to everyone. We’re taking baby steps. We don’t know exactly how it’s going to roll out here.”

While the exact format remains unknown, Vashon’s Teen Council will work with both VHS and McMurray Middle School students.

Vashon High School (VHS) principal Danny Rock said that the idea for a Teen Council has been in the mind of the district for awhile, but started to take off two years ago after a council from Olympia came and gave a presentation.

“There’s a law that requires schools to include HIV education, and we had been sticking it into U.S. history or senior English classes, classes that really had nothing to do with that topic,” Rock said. “When we saw the Teen Council roll that into their presentation, it struck us as a better way to do that. Teen Council became the answer to several different problems.”

He said that the council will also go far beyond the education aspect and will teach students leadership skills.

“What I believe Teen Council will accomplish will be a way for leadership development to occur,” he said. “Here, these kids are stepping up and becoming teachers for their peers. That’s a challenging and risky venture. They will receive and experience something I want all my students to experience.”

VISD nurse Sarah Day also referenced the Olympia Teen Council presentation and called the Teen Council program “powerful.”

“It was fantastic,” she said. “The power of kids talking to other kids is an extremely powerful form of education. It’s critical to get the correct information out to kids.”

The Teen Council is the district’s most recent addition to its sexual education program. Last spring, a committee of district employees and community members, including Archambault, set forth a plan to update the district’s sex education curriculum.