HEART to Grow is a Chicago-based organization dedicated to promoting sexual health, uprooting gendered violence, and advancing reproductive justice for Muslim girls and gender expansive youth through education, advocacy, and training. What began as small gatherings of Chicago girls and mothers having honest conversations about sex, healthy relationships, and gender-based violence has grown into a trusted voice in Muslim reproductive health education.
Young Muslim girls have historically had less access to reproductive health education that speaks to their lived experience, leaving many without the medically accurate, culturally grounded information they need to make informed decisions about their bodies and safety. HEART to Grow set out to close that gap with The Sex Talk: A Muslim’s Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships, a resource offering candid, inclusive conversations about sex and relationships that centers Islamic scholarship by Muslim women academics alongside real, lived experience. It gives readers medically accurate information, reflection prompts, and conversation starters, but girls need more than a book—they need spaces to actually talk through what they’re reading with peers they trust.
The Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund will support the pilot of The Sex Talk Workshop Series, an 8-week hybrid curriculum pairing a community book club with interactive workshops built around HEART to Grow’s publication. Serving 25 to 30 girls and gender expansive youth ages 16 to 19, the program will open with an in-person gathering in Chicago to build trust and community, continue with weekly virtual sessions of discussion and workshops led by HEART’s health education team, and close with an in-person celebration. With this funding, participants will leave equipped with the knowledge to protect their own health and safety, and a select group will go on to train as facilitators themselves, building a leadership pipeline ready to bring these conversations to Muslim communities across the country.
For more information about HEART, please visit the organization’s website.
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