Celebrity Host Focuses on Issues That Affect Youth

July 29, 2008

Newark, NJ – Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey’s (PPMNJ) teen peer educators, trained volunteers, and staff will join with Terrance J, the television host of BET’s 106 and Park, to talk about issues that affect young people. Tonight’s conversation and voter registration phone bank will kick off Terrance J’s efforts to register 19,650 young voters this summer.

Newark is the first of six stops that Terrance J will make before ending his campaign with a Voter Awareness rally at his alma mater in North Carolina.

Terrance J and PPMNJ staff will discuss the $1.5 billion failure of dangerous abstinence-only education programs and the recent CDC report that 1 in 4 teenage girls currently have a sexually transmitted infection. Members of Planned Parenthood’s New Jersey Action Fund, the political and advocacy arm of Planned Parenthood, will talk about how these issues translate to the polls and the efforts that the Action Fund is making to reach out to young voters this year.

In January of this year the Planned Parenthood Action Fund launched its One Million Strong campaign to bring one million voters who care about access to reproductive health care to the polls in November and to educate voters about health issues.

“This year more than ever before, young people will be a decisive force in the presidential contest,” said Jane Hutnik, Public Affairs Director at PPMNJ. “We want to make sure that young people connect their issues with political decisions; and, that they speak with their votes this November.