About Us
Ensuring honest sex education for all Minnesota youth
through collaboration, education, and advocacy.
Our Vision
Honest Sex Ed Minnesota envisions a state where all students receive accurate, inclusive, and accessible sexual health and relationship education that fosters lifelong health and wellbeing.
Our Mission
Honest Sex Ed Minnesota educates, advocates, and creates a community around sex education. Our work empowers policymakers, teachers, youth, parents, and community partners to advocate for policy, implement, and speak out for honest sex education for Minnesota youth.
Our Values
HONESTY
Quality sex education is honest, characterized by the following traits: clear and direct, medically and scientifically accurate, complete information (no half-truths), empowering, supportive of many sexual and health choices, trauma-informed, and culturally inclusive and responsive.
COLLABORATION
Effective social and educational change requires the voices of many in collaboration. This collaboration must create bridges of understanding that center on inclusion, respect, and mutual care.
EMPOWERMENT
Quality sex education empowers students, teachers, and parents at individual and structural levels to feel confident, informed, and capable of making decisions around sexual and relational health.
Our Story
In the summer of 2024, the Minnesota State Legislature had just successfully passed a requirement for the development of statewide health education standards. When our founder and executive director, Dr. Meg Bartlett-Chase, looked around, she saw many organizations doing important work but none focused solely on advocacy and support for sex education in our schools. While policy and standards are vital, implementation of sex education practices requires consistent support and empowerment for educators, students, and their school communities.
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By July of that year, Meg had begun assembling a group of passionate educators and advocates who had real connection to the mission of Honest Sex Ed Minnesota. Christina DeVries, a change-maker and creative, quickly joined our team as Associate Executive Director focused on operations and development. We assembled our incredible founding board of Jill Farris (adolescent sexual and reproductive health expert), Steve Chapin (MNSHAPE 2023 Teacher of the Year), Kara Cowell (menstrual equity advocate and current MPH student), and Tipheret Peña (sexual violence prevention advocate and development professional).
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Our founding staff and board are committed to providing support and amplifying the voices of students, teachers, and parents who know that sex education should be accurate, inclusive, and accessible. We are so excited to empower communities and educators and help create the sex education young people deserve.