This week, we featured one of our very own homeschool students to share her experience with starting a pro-life club. Ashton has been a volunteer for Students for Life for a year and a half, helping around the office and even being our young actress in our Expose Plan B campaign! She is here to offer some help to her fellow homeschoolers on how to start a pro-life group with your homeschool friends!
Hi! My name is Ashton and I am a pro-life homeschooler from Northern Virginia. I have been volunteering at Students for Life once a week for a year a half and I love it! After seeing a flyer at a local rally, I became interested in the organization and wanted to help them out with the pro-life movement. About a week later, my mom drove me over and I asked if they needed someone to volunteer their time to help them in the office. And I am so glad I did! I started volunteering the next week and have not stopped since! Volunteering at Students for Life is one of the highlights of my week. I love the atmosphere and the people. It makes me feel at home.
I had been volunteering for a year when I was asked if I would like to do some under-cover video work for them about Plan B, a common ‘morning after pill’ that causes early abortions. I readily agreed and we started filming. I portrayed a teenage girl who was buying Plan B. Our goal was to show that a fifteen year old can go to a pharmacy and buy Plan B without an ID, but had to have an ID to buy Sudafed, a common cold medicine. The campaign was a success in raising awareness about the danger of Plan B and its ridiculous availability to young girls. You can check out the videos here!
Along with my undercover work, I decided I want start a club with my local homeschool community. I wanted to share some of my experiences in hopes that it will help other homeschoolers be successful in starting clubs too!
Putting together a pro-life group can be hard, especially for homeschoolers. Not being in a school setting can create dilemmas for putting together a group, such as having very different schedules from your peers, not having a daily routine where you meet your friends, and not having a school system to help support your group. But it is NOT impossible. Here are my first two tips on how to start a group in an unconventional setting:
You don’t need a big group to make a big impact – When first starting the group, I wasn’t sure who to recruit. I messaged all of my friends, but only a few responded. At first, it was disappointing, but then I realized that you do not need a hundred or even ten people to start a group. Who cares if your pro-life group starts off with two people? So, don’t be discouraged if you only have a few members to start off with, having a smaller group might even be better to start off with so you can manage and are able to get a sense of things before the group expands.
Tell friends about the group BEFORE school starts – Teenagers today are soooooo busy! We all have our calendars full of social events and dreaded homework, which makes adding yet another event even harder. Most people assume that homeschoolers have all this free time on their hands, but that is certainly not true. We still have school to do, co-ops, sports, and other activities. I messaged my friends and asked them constantly when we could have our first meeting. Every weekend one of us seemed to be doing something! From my experience it is better to plan ahead and tell friends about the group BEFORE school, sports and other social activities start. I had to wait a semester to start my group to make it work. You may be able to start a group during the middle of the spring semester but, I know for certain, that if you start planning now you can make sure you will have a group starting up over the summer that will be successful by next fall!
I hope this helps you guys with starting your pro-life homeschool groups. If you have any questions about starting your group, please email Missy Martinez at SFLA. She is a SUPER pro-lifer and loves helping students start their groups. Check back soon, I will add more tips on pro-life homeschool groups for you.
For Life,
Ashton
