Eleven years ago, the Argentine government passed a law guaranteeing the right of all students in public and private schools to receive comprehensive sex education. But as budget cuts threaten the national sex education program, upholding that guarantee has fallen to independent organizations and volunteers.

At 9 a.m., students in a public school classroom in this capital city bustle like ants on a hill. Then, volunteers show the teenagers drawings of reproductive organs and photos of contraceptive methods.

One boy speaks up: “I’m ashamed to buy condoms,” he says.

School administrators say such discussions are so important that they’ve worked to make sure they happen, even as federal funding for sex education is pulled.

“The main contents of the subject are the prevention of drug use, sexually transmitted diseases and abuse,” says Emanuel Basille, principal of the Instituto Parroquial Santa María Madre del Pueblo, where the workshop took place. “We try to give importance to the prevention of diseases that are more prevalent in the neighborhood, such as tuberculosis and HIV.”

Basille’s school relies on presentations by volunteers from the school of pharmacy and biochemistry at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, which has run sex education workshops for 15 years. The group is part of the university-funded Ubanex, which focuses on sexual and reproductive health in vulnerable populations. It’s one of a host of organizations that offer similar free workshops, often run by unpaid staff members.

Without those volunteers, sex education in many public schools might not happen at all. Budget cuts to a national sex education program, formally called the Programa Nacional de Educación Sexual Integral, or ESI, began in 2016, just after President Mauricio Macri took office in late 2015. The cuts have resulted in fewer teacher trainings to equip them to teach sex ed, as well as for materials for students. Read more via Global Press Journal