http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-peer9-2008jun09,0,4596440.story?track=ntothtml
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE
Smart talk from South L.A.'s 'sex ed girl'
Because Andreina Cordova coolly counsels her
teen peers on birth control and STDs, they assume things about her.
They'd be wrong.
By Francisco Vara-Orta
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 9, 2008
Andreina Cordova has a 15-minute window to change a life, just a few
moments between the dismissal of classes and the beginning of soccer
practice.
She wants to speak to anyone who will listen -- about making smart decisions about sex.
She plunges into the throng of students on the sidewalk outside King/Drew Magnet High School of Science and Medicine.
She has memorized pages and pages of information on sex education and
sexually transmitted diseases. She's ready to pass out cards from
Planned Parenthood, listing services and clinics. She is also armed
with condoms.
Andreina is 15. She's been attending Planned Parenthood sex education
events since the age of 13. She had just finished eighth grade when she
became one of the youngest students ever hired to be a peer advocate in
a program whose goal is to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates.
And that may be why some of the kids at school assume certain things about Andreina.
"People are like, just because she does this peer counseling, she is going to have sex like
that," said Bryanna Rivera, who is also 15 and a friend.
But they don't know Andreina.
Popular culture works against anyone trying to push safe sex or
abstinence. Sexually charged advertising floods TV; MySpace and
Facebook are saturated with come-ons from and for adolescents. Thanks
to the tabloids, updates on 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy
appear almost daily.
More than 360,000 adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease
each year in Los Angeles County. In 2005, the most recent year for
which data is available, 5,113 L.A. County girls younger than 18 gave
birth -- 3.4% of all births that year.
Andreina does her outreach at the epicenter of the crisis, South L.A.,
which has the county's highest percentage of teen births and rates of
sexually transmitted diseases, according to the county's Department of
Public Health.
The statistics aren't just numbers to Andreina; they represent the
teenagers sitting next to her in class, on the school bus, at her house.
"These are people that I know," Andreina said.
Asked why a 15-year-old would risk insults, humiliation and rejection
to counsel peers on birth control and STDs, Andreina summons the memory
of a middle-school classmate who became pregnant and dropped out.
A few weeks after her classmate left school, Andreina attended her first safe-sex awareness event hosted by Planned Parenthood.
She quickly understood her goal: to educate teenagers on how to make wise decisions.
"I mean, I was in middle school. They don't teach you a lot about sex there," Andreina said.
But first she had one large hurdle to clear: her parents.
Cars pack the driveway of Andreina's house in Paramount on a Sunday morning.
Inside, three generations of Cordova women gather along with Andreina's
father, Andres, 50. The conversation among the Salvadoran American
family alternates between English and Spanish.
Andreina, whom the family calls "Gina," is the youngest of five
sisters; four still live with their parents and maternal grandmother,
Carmen. All the sisters are in high school or college, and four of
them, including Andreina, want to work in healthcare.
Though the sisters regard their parents as traditional, Roman Catholic
and strict, both Andres and his wife, Ana Lillian, 49, demur.
The couple dated for a few years and moved in together in 1982, but didn't marry in a civil ceremony until the
quinceañeraof their first daughter, Jaime, in 1997. It wasn't until their next daughter, Cynthia, had her
quinceañera the next year that the two married in the Catholic Church.
"Our parents wanted us to get married," Ana Lillian said. "We didn't see the need for a little piece of paper."
But perspective is everything. Ana Lillian and Andres are now the
parents of five daughters who want to stay out late with friends or
dates.
"My white friends still laugh when I tell them that I have to let my dad know if I'll be home late," Jaime, 25, said.
"I'm responsible for them as long as they live under this roof," Andres said. "I just want to be in the loop."
The parent-teenager dance is one that Andreina has learned by watching her sisters grow up.
When she asked to attend her first Planned Parenthood event, Andreina said, "my parents at first didn't know what I was doing."
So when Andres said yes, her sisters were shocked.
But Andres explained: "My parents never talked to me about sex. So many
of us back in El Salvador just had to figure out things on our own,
from our friends usually."
Now Ana Lillian frequently drives her youngest to Planned Parenthood outreach events.
On the day before school closed for a three-week break, Andreina
stopped about 12 students on the campus' sidewalks. The girls seemed
receptive; the boys, amused.
She briefly spoke with two classmates. The 16-year-old boys listened
intently, their grins fading as she rattled off a list of STDs to watch
out for. They asked about the symptoms of chlamydia -- pain during
urination or in the groin area -- with one of them adding: "Can you
keep this private?"
Andreina nodded.
"You know where to find me if you have more questions," she added.
Andreina's work is anchored in Planned Parenthood's Ujima Program,
which preaches more abstinence and less sex. At least "until you know
what you're getting into and the consequences," Andreina said.
The program was launched in 2002 after research indicated that teens
were more likely to feel comfortable discussing sex with peers instead
of parents, said Mary-Jane Waglé, president and chief executive of
Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.
Andreina "understands the experience of teens in her area, she has
lived there, and she understands what they are going through," Waglé
said. "Her knowing all that firsthand gives her authority to be a
leader and get people to listen."
All peer advocates undergo three days of training and must pass a test
before they are hired into the program. Andreina and the other
participants meet once a week in a small clinic in South L.A. to
discuss safe-sex issues and coordinate events.
She's learned how to work within the guidelines set by school
administrators, who asked her not to distribute condoms on campus but
did allow her to leave them in the nurse's office.
But those who know Andreina only as the "sex ed girl," as her friend
Bryanna puts it, don't understand the woman she's working to become.
On school days, Andreina wakes up no later than 6 a.m. to make the 30-
to 45-minute commute to King/Drew. She goes through a full day, always
missing lunch on Wednesdays to attend two club meetings for 15 minutes
each.
A glance at her schedule shows an extracurricular activity planned
every day after school: a community service club, the Planned
Parenthood peer meeting, soccer practice, the school newspaper. She
gets home around 7 p.m., has dinner and hits the books until bedtime
around 10:30, hoping to raise her only B, in geometry, to an A. Later
in the semester, when soccer season ends, she'll fill her schedule with
art club, guitar lessons and salsa classes.
On weekends, it's "all homework, 24-7," she said with a smirk, sitting cross-legged on her bed one Sunday afternoon.
"I'm always trying to get her to hang out, but she's too busy trying to
save the world," her sister Jennifer, 16, a junior at Paramount High
School, lamented in the doorway to her room.
Andreina's eagerness to engage in discussions about safe sex can be
disarming. Barely 5 feet tall, she dresses modestly, frequently wears
her long, glossy hair in a ponytail and uses minimal makeup. When
strangers see her coming, they don't expect her to offer them a condom.
On a Saturday afternoon in late April, Andreina and five other peer
advocates set up a booth at a health fair in Carson's Victoria Regional
Park.
As the sun warmed the grounds, Andreina and two other students, Julio
Penaloza, 18, and Angelica Woodard, 16, left the booth and made their
way through the crowds. Angelica carried a wicker basket full of
pamphlets and condoms.
Andreina served as ringleader, approaching strangers, introducing
herself and her peers -- sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish --
and asking if they were interested in hearing about Planned
Parenthood's services. Some asked questions, others just listened,
others nervously accepted a directory on clinic locations or a handful
of condoms.
Thirty or so had gathered under a tree to shield themselves from the heat. Among them were six teenage boys in soccer uniforms.
"Are you guys under the age of 18?" Andreina asked.
Yes, responded a 16-year-old.
Andreina introduced herself. The boys, she said, were welcome to "come kick it any time" at the Ujima Teen Center.
She mentioned the services available -- health exams, birth control, STD testing, free condoms -- and the location.
She paused, then effortlessly asked the 16-year-old: "Do you want some condoms?"
He smirked and replied, "Yeah, sure."
"Do you have any questions?" Andreina asked.
"Where is it located again?"
"Eighty-fifth and Broadway."
As Andreina walked away, the boy shouted at her: "You're cute!" His
teammates giggled, and he lobbed another grenade: "I love you!" he
yelled, louder this time.
Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Andreina said, "That's been happening a little more lately."
Although Andreina has purposely maneuvered herself into the middle of a
neighborhood health crisis, she is still a kid who shares a room with
her 70-year-old grandmother.
There are Salvadoran flags on her wall, stuffed animals on her bed. All
of the "Harry Potter" books and a copy of Halo 3 for Xbox sit on her
nightstand.
The family had just celebrated her
quinceañera, the party that marks a girl's transition from childhood to adulthood.
But in many ways, family, friends and peers say, Andreina has already arrived.
"I look up to her even though she's my little sister," said Erika, a
21-year-old UCLA student. "None of us have been capable of her
balancing act."
Andres Cordova seems impressed as well: "There's an age for
everything," he said. "I worried Andreina was too young to know about
sex and thought, Well, if one knows how to do something, there could
arise the curiosity to try it out."
He paused, looking at her seated on the couch, and added, "But I trust her to do the right thing."
Andres said Andreina's work as a peer advocate was more of a health
issue than a moral one, and thinks that learning about the consequences
of unprotected sex has actually pushed Andreina closer to abstinence.
"There's a time in my life that's going to come when I'll have to make
some of the same decisions I'm counseling for," she said, "but it's not
the right time for me yet. And I'm comfortable with that."
francisco.varaorta
@latimes.com
