Inclusive Sexual Health Education Efforts – Nana Yamamoto and Sriya Srivastava

Sriya shares about their project’s objectives:

“Our project focuses on community engagement in collaboration with Covenant House Vancouver to address youth homelessness, with a specific emphasis on diverse, inclusive, and non-binary sexual health education. By incorporating sexual health education into Covenant House Vancouver’s life skills programs, we aim to bridge the gaps between current initiatives and the complex challenges faced by homeless youth.”

Nana shares how integral their community partnerships were with Covenant House Vancouver and BLUSH to support at-risk youth:

“Covenant House Vancouver is dedicated to supporting young people aged 16-25 who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness or human trafficking. They operate with a foundation of absolute respect and unconditional love, aiming to help each young person build a positive future through counselling, education, stable employment, and secure housing. Among their many services, they provide crisis housing programs tailored to homeless youth, ensuring a safe and supportive environment during times of transition.”

“Our collaboration focused on working with their life skills team, where we identified key gaps in resources available to homeless youth. We gained valuable insights into the importance of sexual health education, particularly in addressing the trauma and negative experiences many of these young individuals have faced.”

“We also partnered with BLUSH, an organization that empowers youth to explore attitudes, values, and behaviours that support sexual health and well-being with lifelong impact. BLUSH provides peer-to-peer education through workshops and counselling sessions for youth aged 12-18. Their programs, such as Healthy Relationships, Safer Sex, and Media Literacy, address crucial topics that resonate with young people.”

“Working with both Covenant House and BLUSH was incredibly inspiring. We were moved by the passion and commitment these organizations bring to their work, and we deeply appreciated their collaborative spirit, flexibility, and dedication to helping us realize our program goals. Their support made a profound difference in the impact we achieved together.”

For more information, we invite you to visit Covenant House Vancouver and BLUSH – Vancouver Coastal Health.

Sriya opened up about the practical and relational lessons learned throughout their project:

“The biggest lesson we drew from this grant project was learning the mechanics of project management. We were able to strengthen these skills especially in coordinating with a range of internal and external parties, and stakeholders as well as managing logistics and timelines. We learned the difficulties that could accompany the organization of a project team, along with balancing coursework. However, we were able to establish regular check-ins and sub-teams to hold each other accountable for our tasks, support each others’ strengths and achieve success in delivering the workshops and developing long standing resources, in a timely manner.”

“Another lesson we drew from this project was about meaningfully engaging with the community. We learned about the importance of seeking community specialists’ advice and input in designing community engagement projects, specifically by collaborating with them to identify areas where they require more support or capacity. We also learned about the great work that exists within the Vancouver community by different organizations, and how they can benefit from collaborating among one another, emphasizing the importance of linking parties. We also learned that organizations are always willing to collaborate with students, and we were encouraged by the engaging possibilities that we can achieve with these organizations once we make the first step towards seeking them.”

“Finally, we were able to deepen our understanding of inclusive sexual health education especially in relation to non-binary and gender-diverse individuals, in the context of marginalized and homeless youth in Vancouver. This learning was key to ensuring our workshops and materials were well developed and received, and gave us an important insight on the intersectionality of social issues that exist within our community that require attention.”

For students considering applying for a CCEL Grant, Sriya offers some valuable advice:

“The most helpful step our team took to complete the CCEL grant application was a consultation session with a member of the CCEL staff who provided us with extremely valuable feedback about our application, approach and direction. Our group had a clear picture of our ideal application after this round of consultation. The application guides available on the CCEL website also provided extremely helpful tips regarding the application, helping to focus our writing.”

“In terms of approaching the project conceptually, it is important to hold a round of discussions with the partner organization to concretely clarify the aims of the project, along with the budget, timeline and other project details. These discussions helped our team and the Covenant House team align the expectations and needs we aim to achieve as a result of this project.”

“Finally, it’s important to be realistic about the goals this project aims to achieve within the time frame and budget, to focus the work and concentrate all the resources meaningfully. It can be a good idea to get the project plan reviewed by people with more project management experience, such as the partner organization, to gauge the viability of the project.”