ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603180052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE'S TASK FORCE on teen-age pregnancy will give recommendations next month. But some folks at a Northwest Roanoke church have their own plan.
Here is the weekday routine of 15-year-old Teresa Melton:
She awakens at 6 a.m. to feed her 5-month-old daughter, Katelynn. At 9 a.m., Melton is off to school at Roanoke's Maternal and Infant Education Center - otherwise known as the "pregnant teens school."
About 12:30, "I go home and play with my baby all day," Melton said. "That's it."
Shopping is out - Melton has no car. Hanging out with friends is a distant memory. "When I had my baby, all that stopped," Melton said. "All my friends left me, that partying ended. Basically, my childhood ended."
"Partying - I just gave that all up," added Dawn Price, 19, whose little boy, Lashai, is 2. "You can't be out on the street partying if you want to raise that child right, and that's what I decided to do."
Melton, Price and some others brought the consequences of teen-age sex to about 25 youths in a basement room at Maple Street Baptist Church on Fairfax Avenue Northwest on Saturday.
They were part of a faith-based pregnancy-prevention program that mixes a mostly pro-abstinence, pro-Christian message with education on AIDS and the dangers of drugs and alcohol. For teens who refuse to forgo sex, the message was: Make sure you're protected.
"We want to put these thoughts in your minds: Maybe I don't have to get pregnant; maybe I don't have to engage in drug abuse," the Rev. Thom Woods, a substance-abuse prevention specialist for Blue Ridge Community Services, told the youths.
"We want you to think and make decisions rather than jump into some of these things," said Carleen Johnson-Alleyne, another substance-abuse prevention specialist for the agency.
The sponsors' fears aren't overblown. Roanoke in 1991 had the highest rate of teen-age pregnancy in Virginia. Since then, the ranking has dropped a little. But the city's rate of 80 births for every 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 is still double the state average and more than twice the rate in surrounding jurisdictions.
A task force of residents studying the city's teen pregnancy problem will bring forth its recommendations in April. But Janis Wade and Nona Wallace of the Church League at Maple Street Baptist didn't want to wait.
They and the Rev. Vater Colbert, who joined the 300-member church in August, invited Blue Ridge Community Services and some of their clients to meet directly with neighborhood youths who are confronted daily with the lure of sex and drugs.
"When I came here, my [agenda] was to bring the awareness of the congregation up," Colbert said. "Not so much to just stand there and preach, but also to meet the needs of the community. What we saw was, in our church, concerns were drugs and teen-age pregnancy. The city is blanketed with those problems, especially in the low-income areas."
AIDS education was included because "the act that causes the spread of ... AIDS is the same thing that causes unwanted pregnancy," said Dina Hackley-Hunt, a counselor at Patrick Henry High School.
The most somber portion of the morning workshop came during remarks by Terrance Drew, 31, of Roanoke. In 1994, Drew learned he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Since then, he has been in and out of hospitals with eye and lung problems.
Drew said he almost lost his life to a bout with pneumonia last July but that God saved him to help spread a message:
"If you go out there and be promiscuous, you're going to die, because [AIDS is] going to get you."
Hackley-Hunt told the youths that what they need most of all are goals for their lives. They also have to draw a line when it comes to sex and drugs and promise themselves that no matter what, they won't cross it.
Judging by the reactions of some of the youths, that message was heard.
"I want to be an elementary school teacher," said Tiffany Allen, 11. "I want to wait - until I get my life together."
Wade and Wallace said they hope the efforts of their church will be noticed and expanded into a grass-roots youth education campaign in many other Roanoke Valley churches.
"Black, white, rich and poor, we have to form that line, tell them that drugs are not good, that abstinence is right," Colbert said.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Dawn Price, 19, and her son,by CNB2-year-old Lashai, play with 5-month-old Katelynn Melton and her
mother, Teresa, 15. Dawn and Teresa spoke to teens on the
consequences of sex. color.