LOCAL AGENCY RECEIVES GRANT FOR SEXUAL ABSTINENCE CAMPAIGN
“A Crying Shame” Helps Educate Youth and Parents about Abstinence

Milwaukee, Wis. February 2, 2006-  Rosalie Manor Community & Family Services, a Milwaukee social services agency, has received a federal grant in the amount of $798,000 to provide abstinence based education to youth and also to conduct a marketing campaign in the Greater Milwaukee area promoting sexual abstinence until marriage.

 “A Crying Shame,” Rosalie Manor’s abstinence campaign, is significant to the Milwaukee community for many reasons. Milwaukee has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation and reports of sexually transmitted diseases between youth ages 10-19 are in the thousands. The only sure way of preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is abstinence.

 “We recognize that abstinence is a tough topic to approach,” says Al Castro, Executive Director for Rosalie Manor Community & Family Services. “Through the campaign, ‘A Crying Shame’ we can bring attention to the need for programs such as our Families United to Prevent Teen Pregnancy program, which focuses on providing youth with skills to help combat peer pressure, alternatives to sex, reasons to wait to have sex as well as a general awareness of our abstinence message.”

Rosalie Manor and the Milwaukee Alliance for Teaching Abstinence have also created a website dedicated to abstinence education. The site, www.acryingshame.info, supplies valuable resources and information for youth, families and educators regarding abstinence. In addition to this website, the “A Crying Shame” campaign includes billboards and radio commercials.

Part of the Milwaukee community for over 95 years, Rosalie Manor Community & Family Services is a non-profit organization that works to reduce the incidence of child abuse and teen pregnancy.  For more information about the “A Crying Shame” abstinence campaign or other Rosalie Manor programs, please contact Dawn Groshek at 414-449-2868 x 202 or via email or visit the abstinence website at www.acryingshame.info.