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DENVER — Joneen Mackenzie is arming as many people as she can with the skills needed to create marriages that last.
In 2003 she founded the Center for Relationship Education in Denver, Colorado. CRE's curriculum is now taught in 42 states and eight countries. Mackenzie is a registered nurse and saw the need for a different approach to sex ed after she visited her son's class.
"My intention was always to fill the gap between body parts and contraception," Mackenzie said. "It was to talk about relationships."
The secular, science-based curriculum meets state education standards and advocates waiting until marriage to have sex.
"Kids equate sex with disease because that is all we are talking about," Mackenzie explained. "I want to change that paradigm. If you couple sex with committed love, diseases are going to go down, pregnancies are going to go down, our hearts are going to be full, marriages are going to take place."
Mackenzie also tries to share a positive message about the sex lives of married couples.
"They've done the research on who is having the best sex, who is having the most sex. It is married people," Mackenzie said.
That message is resonating with young people.
"I believe it allowed me to learn more about myself as far as my personality and my character traits and how I love. I fall very fast," said Jazzmine Phillips-Thomas, 17.
Fifteen-year-old Desmond Brown hasn't known very man happily married couples, so he said the class changed his views.
"Since I come from a poor neighborhood, a lot of the fathers don't really stick around to be with their children," Desmond said. "Just examples of how happy someone can be in the right marriage and just how successful marriages go through."
Kris Ann Jacobs is an educator and appreciates how the course meets the standards and requirements for most states.
Darius Jones and his wife took the course and decided to become workshop facilitators.
"What we saw through the workshop is any relationship doesn't even work without healthy communication and good communication and continuing education," Jones said.
The inability to work through conflict is the No. 1 cause of relationships falling apart, according to Mackenzie.
"If you can teach young people how to resolve conflict well in a very intentional way — with a skill set they now have overcome the No. 1 reason for relationship dissolution," Mackenzie said.
