Honest, accurate information about sexuality changes lives. It dismantles stereotypes and assumptions, builds self-acceptance and self-esteem, fosters healthy relationships, improves decision making, and has the potential to save lives. For these reasons and more, we are proud to offer Our Whole Lives (OWL), a comprehensive, lifespan sexuality education curricula.

Our Whole Lives covers topics and skills that both parents and students want to have available but schools are less likely to cover. Our Whole Lives curricula are based on the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (PDF) produced by the National Guidelines Task Force, a group of leading health, education, and sexuality professionals assembled by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). In every category of assessment, the curriculum meets or exceeds the National Standards for Sexuality Education Core Curriculum, K-12.

Every other church year, we offer age appropriate Our Whole Lives programming at these levels:

• Kindergarten & 1^st
• Grades 4^th & 5^th
• Grades 7^th & 8^th
• Grades 10^th-12^th
• Young Adult (ages 18-35)
• Adult
• Older Adult

What’s Religious about Sexuality Education?

In liberal religious sexuality education, we seek to provide roots and wings for program participants. The roots are our Unitarian Universalist religious traditions and values, which accept participants and value them for who they are so they feel good about themselves and their sexuality. The wings are the freedom they have to make meaning of their own lives; the opportunity to clarify their own values and apply them to their own experiences; and the strength to develop into their own true, best selves.

The Our Whole Lives curricula help transform a cultural climate of fear and confusion into a new reality of lives lived congruent with the values of the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person.

 Our Whole Lives is religious because it seeks to nurture:

• religious community
• spiritual depth
• prophetic vision and action for justice
• values congruent with participants’ religious beliefs and the skills, attitudes, and knowledge to live out those values
• the worth and dignity of every participant

Our Whole Lives Assumptions

• All persons are sexual.
• Sexuality is a good part of the human experience.
• Human beings are sexual from the time they are born until they die.
• It is natural to express sexual feelings in a variety of ways.
• People engage in healthy sexual behavior for a variety of reasons, including to express caring and love, to experience intimacy and connection with another, to share pleasure, to bring new life into the world, and to experience fun and relaxation.
• Sexuality in our society is damaged by violence, exploitation, alienation, dishonesty, abuse of power, and the treatment of persons as objects.
• It is healthier for young adolescents to postpone sexual intercourse.

Our Whole Lives Values

The content of each age level of the series embodies these values:

• Self-Worth
• Sexual Health
• Responsibility
• Justice and Inclusivity

Our Whole Lives Offers

• Honest, age-appropriate answers to all participants’ questions
• Activities to help participants clarify values and improve decision-making skills
• Effective group-building to create a safe and supportive peer group
• Education about sexual abuse, exploitation, and harassment
• Opportunities to critique media messages about gender and sexuality
• Acceptance of diversity
• Encouragement to act for justice
• Parent orientation programs that affirm and support parents as the primary sexuality educators of their children