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Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Educational Fund $72,000
Washington, D.C.
Ann Thompson Cook, Executive Director
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is a national coalition of 38 Protestant, Jewish, and
other faith groups committed to the preservation of reproductive rights and religious freedom. Over the
past several years, religious right ideologues have worked quietly to position themselves on decisionmaking
bodies within church hierarchies. Once situated on these bodies, they have used their positions
to attack from within any denominational actions that they perceive as pro-choice. This year, a $60,000
grant from the Foundation will assist the Coalition with a project designed to educate its faith group
members about the dangers posed by these religious right activities, to support denominations that are
now under attack, and to work with faith groups to develop strategies to counter right-wing influence.
A second $12,000 grant will enable RCAR to develop and distribute guidelines that outline religious
right positions and strategies and that describe how these positions undermine religious liberty and the
right to choose. The guidelines will be distributed to the 35,000 participants in a national United
Church of Christ teleconference entitled "Freedom of Conscience and the Radical Religious Right."
Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S. $120,000
New York, New York
Over 2 years
Debra W. Haffner, President
The Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) was founded in 1964 to provide
information on parenting and reproduction to health care professionals, educators, policymakers, students,
and the general public. In 1989, concerned with rising statistics on teen pregnancy and the
frightening implications of the growing AIDS threat, SIECUS began to concentrate more of its
resources on developing programs for teens. Since then, it has released comprehensive curriculum
guidelines for sexuality education, produced a handbook on building grassroots support for sex education
in the schools, and developed a coalition of national organizations committed to moving this
agenda forward. Most recently, it released a blue ribbon report on the state of the nation's adolescents'
sexual health. Our grant will support SIECUS's continued efforts to inform the public policy debate
on these issues as part of its overall program of advancing sexuality education. Work will include support
for and expansion of the National Coalition to Support Sexuality Education, aggressive outreach
to federal policymakers, and a program of training workshops and speeches designed to teach activists
how to promote comprehensive sexuality education in their own communities.