ABOUT SAFE SUMMER SLAM 2011

With an expectancy of over 500 attendees, Safe Summer Slam is a youth empowerment event and neighborhood festival that encompasses a health fair, cultural showcase, games, entertainment, activities and food all in one. In addition, we collaborate with community organizations to provide and set-up information booths with resources about socially related issues such as teen pregnancy prevention, family planning, health improvement, and more for those who attend. Free to the public.

TEEN PREGNANCY FACTS

The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world -- twice as high as in England or Canada and eight times as high as in the Netherlands or Japan. 3 in 10 girls will get pregnant at least once before the age of 20! About half of teens (48%) say they have never thought about what their life would be like if they got/got someone pregnant as a teen. A significant minority of teens (29%) and adults (25%) go on to describe teen pregnancy and parenthood in their community as "no big deal".

Between 2005 and 2007, National City had a total of 401 teens give births. The approximate cost of the children born to these teens is $7,222,000. As a comparison, teen childbearing (teens 19 and younger) in California cost taxpayers (federal, state, and local) at least $896 million in 2004, and nationally teen childbearing costs taxpayers at least $9.1 billion a year.

The cost of teenage pregnancy is not only financial. Data from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy shows the following:

Parenthood is the leading reason why teen girls drop out of school. Less than half of teen mothers ever graduate from high school and fewer than two percent earn a college degree by age 30.

Children of teen mothers do worse in school than those born to older parents -- they are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade, are less likely to complete high school than the children of older mothers, and have lower performance on standardized tests.

Teen mothers are likely to have a second birth relatively soon -- about one-fourth of teenage mothers have a second child within 24 months of the first birth -- which can further impede their ability to finish school or keep a job, and to escape poverty.

Eight out of ten fathers don't marry the mother of their child. These absent fathers pay less than $800 annually for child support, often because they are poor themselves. Children who live apart from their fathers are also five times more likely to be poor than children with both parents at home.

The daughters of young teen mothers are three times more likely to become teen mothers themselves.

The sons of teen mothers are twice as likely to end up in prison.