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Winner of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund - March 24, 2009
Linda Brice Honored with $5,000 Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award
March 24, 2009

Lubbock, Texas Resident Wins Cash Award To Support Sex Education Program For Young Girls


(New York, NY, March 24, 2009) – Lubbock, Texas resident Linda Brice, is one step closer to fulfilling her dream of creating a better tomorrow for her community. Linda was named this week’s winner of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, a weekly $5,000 cash award program from Avon Products, Inc. to support individuals in their work to empower women. She is the eleventh recipient of a Hello Tomorrow Fund award in Texas since the program launched in 2007, and was selected by an expanded panel of judges that includes Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York, and actress Phylicia Rashad. Linda will use her award to support Teen Straight Talk, a comprehensive community sex education program for teenage girls and their parents.

According to Texas state records, 17 of the 19 zip codes in Lubbock, TX have teenage pregnancy rates two-to-11 times higher than the national average. As an educator herself, Linda believes that the high rate of teenage pregnancy in the area is due partly to the traditional method of teaching abstinence-only in schools as a measure of pregnancy prevention. For this reason, young girls do not always receive proper sexual education, and often do not fully understand the consequences of being sexually active. Additionally, parents find that communicating sexual education to their children is difficult, so in many cases, this leaves these young women with very little knowledge on the topic.

Linda was a previous recipient of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund on July 31, 2007 to support the Stork’s Nest, an incentive program that encourages low-income pregnant women to seek medical care to ensure their children are born healthy. Through her work on the Stork’s Nest, Linda witnessed the high number of teenage mothers in the Lubbock area, and thus co-developed Teen Straight Talk, which produces three sessions a year for teens and their parents to gather for comprehensive sexual education. Successful execution of each session requires donations, sponsorships, and community support, as Teen Straight Talk is free to participants. When planning for this spring’s session, Linda saw that the program was lacking sufficient funds to continue. That is where the Hello Tomorrow Fund can help.

With help from the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, Linda will be able to facilitate the spring 2009 session of Teen Straight Talk for girls 10 and older and their parents. Topics covered are those such as safe sex, teen pressures, and depression. The session will also host guest speakers Mary Jo Rapini and Janine Sherman, the authors of Start Talking: A Girls Guide for You and Your Mom about Health, Sex, or Whatever and there will also be informational booths on where to get the free pregnancy and STD testing. During the day, the girls and their parents will break into separate groups for the “Big Decision,” a question-and-answer session encouraging topics of discussion in a comfortable setting. The Hello Tomorrow funds will be used to purchase materials, food, and will provide additional resources on the importance of sexual education. Linda hopes that with this useful knowledge, teenage pregnancy rates in the area will decline. “Knowledge is empowerment,” Linda says. “If they know how their body works, and they understand it, they are empowered to make better decisions.”

Linda’s winning application to the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund met the criteria of clearly presenting unique and achievable objectives to empower women or girls and ultimately improve society. It was selected from a pool of strong contenders by an expert panel of judges, including personal finance expert Suze Orman, actress Phylicia Rashad, Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York, and experts in business and grantmaking. “There is a real need for better teen-parent communication about sexual education, and clearly this concept will encourage it,” commented Sarah Ferguson on Linda’s proposal.

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