A dollar a day …
A program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro offers an incentive of $1 for every day its teenage girl participants don’t get pregnant. They don’t collect the money until they complete the program and enroll in college. College Bound Sisters also includes a weekly 90-minute meeting where the girls get instruction in abstinence and contraceptive use.
“We talk about abstinence, but it’s not a requirement,” Dr. Hazel Brown, co-director of the program, told FOXNews.com. “We teach decision-making, being responsible and avoiding pregnancy. The meetings are very interactive.”
Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, agrees that creative ways are needed to confront this “very challenging social issue,” but he added, “It makes me a bit uneasy. I do have mixed feelings. It’s hard to pay people to do something that we think they should be doing regardless. It would be like if you didn’t want young people to experiment with marijuana, you’d pay them not to do it.”
To participate in the program, girls must have never been pregnant, be currently enrolled in school, want to go on to college, and have had a sister who gave birth before age 18. Some girls have banked as much as $3,000 for college.














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back to top16 Comments to “A dollar a day …”
We probably need to incentivize a lot of other stuff: good grades might add up to a scholarship for the first year of college, etc.
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It takes a little more than 8 years to build up $3,000 at $1 per day.
How young are these girls when they get into the program?
Does that community have a lot of pregnant 10 year olds?
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The money comes from the college?
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Well, let’s hope they don’t go broke.
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The college, that is. It does seem slightly strange to me also that people are getting paid for something they should already be doing…
Well, if this incentives plan works, that’s a good thing, I suppose.
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It is quite perverse for a publicly funded university to put together a plan like this. The requirement that the girl must ” have had a sister who gave birth before age 18″ is also perverse. North Carolina has always been seen as a looney tune state. This is a further example of this. Weird , bizarre, and crackpot also apply. As does ‘very suspect’.
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MONTYFISHERWOOF: Don’t paint us Tar Heels with such a broad brush.
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Mickey: I dunno, you guys seem to do that to yourselves. How many faces have I seen at ACC games painted one shade of blue or another?
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It wasn’t looney tune, weird, bizarre and crackpot before I got here. Sorry.
I’ll have to say though, I see lots of people walking around with “CAROLINA” t-shirts of the wrong color.
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Hey Mickey,
I am not likely to use a broad brush for any set or subset of people.
On occasion I might use a mop, but I follow it with a fan then a bright and a filbert. Finishing with a round and a rigger.
I like the idea that the nickname came from the time of the War between the States when the North Carolina troops held their ground where as others ran. It was if the troops had tar on their heels.
I have supported the Tarheels many times. “Some of my friends are Tarheels.”
I think it is still a law in North Carolina that it is illegal to use elephants to plow cotton fields. And it is illegal to take a deer swimming in water above its knees. And it is illegal to drink milk while riding on a train traveling through North Carolina.
But we have to remember that North Carolina is the home to Mayberry. And all of us would be poorer without Mayberry.
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Might this not create a situation in which one sister would get married and have a baby so that the other sister could be in this program? Probably not, but I wouldn’t put it past somebody to do it.
It does seem a strange part of the reward that one’s sister has to be a teenaged mother.
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What about the brothers, can they get paid if they don’t get someone preg.?
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I think the deal with the sisters-who’ve-had-babies rule is that they’re trying to prevent that happening with the younger sisters.
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Responsible sexual behavior is a commendable goal, though it has always been difficult to achieve.
This program is big on the commendable goals, but lacking somewhat in common sense and practicality.
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“What about the brothers, can they get paid if they don’t get someone preg.?”
They do get paid if they don’t knock up their sister.
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This may also encourage abortions. Overall, I don’t particularly like the whole thing.
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