Flemingdon Park community centre program working to provide youth sex education

One theatre program in Flemingdon Park is working to make sex education less intimidating to youth.

The North York neighbourhood became a flashpoint in 2015 during the controversy over Ontario’s updated sex education curriculum. At the time, a parent-led campaign kept thousands of students home to protest the curriculum changes, which introduced concepts such as gender identity, sexual orientation and masturbation.

In response, public health advocate and artist Shira Taylor created a program called SEXT — or Sex Education by Theatre — which teaches teens how to talk openly about relationships and sexual health through theatre.

“My goal was to bring my theatre background and use theatre as a way that we could stop making this topic so serious and stigmatized and make it more relatable and even just fun,” she explained.

Taylor adds that sexually transmitted infections are on the rise among young Torontonians, particularly in underserved communities like Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Park with a lot of newcomer youth.

Since launching in 2014, SEXT has toured over 55 high schools across Canada.

Ibraheem, 16, said the program helps him feel more at ease discussing what his family considers a taboo topic.

“There was a stigma around it. And it’s still true, especially with the older generation. And my mom is religious, so I didn’t know how she would feel if I told her,” Ibraheem, who’s originally from Pakistan, explained.

With “sex” in its name, the program initially had a marketing problem. So Flemingdon Health Centre decided to promote it as NEXT — Newcomer Education By Theatre — to encourage teens to sign up.

“I think one of the approaches we took was changing the name of the program from Sex Education by Theatre to Next Education by Theatre to offer a more inclusive approach and a less intimidating approach for both the youth and the parents,” said Salma Sufi, a community health worker at Flemingdon Health Centre.

Today, some of the youth who finished the program have graduated to become peer mentors, including Sara Ahmed.

“I didn’t get a formal birds and the bees talk with my family, but I think that through the program and [with] the youth now…we’re coming up with ways to find, to deliver information in a way that is relevant to them through the use of theatre because they see themselves in these characters,” the 24-year-old said.

“I think it allows us to kind of open up that conversation [about] mental health and our bodies.”