The purpose of Tin Roof Foundation’s involvement in the “Honest Answers” program is:

• to teach youth the seriousness of AIDS/STDs and the risks they take with sexual relationships outside of marriage
• to help Nicaraguan youth make wise choices in their sexual behavior and be able to differentiate between true love and infatuation/passion
• to help liberate young women from the cycle of poverty they experience when they have many children out-of-wedlock (and within wedlock!); to help them dream of what they might become; to empower them to take their places, with equality, in the society
• to help young men understand their responsibilities when they father children; to learn that it is more important to be “honorable” than “macho”
• to help youth understand, and withstand, the pressure they feel from peers, the media, advertising and the society to be sexually active
• to help Nicaragua with its population explosion (10,000 births per month)

Our participation in the “Honest Answers” Program in Nicaragua springs from our concern about teens and pre-teens giving birth and the impact on young women and their children. Pregnancies often continue as long as women are of childbearing age, contributing to the cycle of poverty. Particularly alarming is the incidence of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Nicaragua. Honest Answers About Dating And Sex is an abstinence sex education manual written by Gwen P. Aseltine, Ph.D, a major financial supporter of the program. Dr. Aseltine has, with the help of Tin Roof Foundation, held seminars in Nicaragua and made manuals translated into Spanish available to teachers and students at no cost to either. (Dr. Aseltine receives no royalties from her manual.)

Tin Roof Foundation helps sponsor and support the “Honest Answers” effort. Today hundreds of Nicaraguan teachers, health care workers, and doctors have been trained to teach the principles of “Honest Answers.” The statistics are very gratifying in areas where the program has been introduced.