Yelon is the phantasy name of our Hungarian sexual education project that provides information and help to young people between the ages of 10 and 18 on their body, self, sexuality and relations.
A webpage and a mobile application makes the information easily accessible for the targeted youth and through both channels they can reach the live chat, serviced by highly trained volunteers. All services are free of charge and offer answers to questions that are regularly regarded as taboo. Yelon approaches the notion of sexuality in a holistic way that is inseparable from self and body, relations and intimity. Yelon - unlike most internet sources on sexuality - provides age-appropriate, professional and reliable information to teenagers. To help keep pace with their children, and as an attempt to assist home and school sexsual education, a separate page was created for parents and other adults responsible for children.
Why sexual education?
There is unlimited access of anyone to any type of pornographic material. Advertisement and general media highly sexually charged. Children are expected to remain innocent and able to find the socially expected time to become sexually active amidst constant sexual provocation. Porn is the 3d most popular search word of children aged 7 to 10. While sexual interest of children is perfectly natural, their "education" in sex by porn seriously affects their chances to develop a healthy attitude to sexuality, intimity and partner relations. They also tend to become over-sexualized while not all of them realize the difference between the make-belief world of porn and sexual activity in real life. Sexual abuse among teenagers is more frequent than before widely accessible porn. Almost half of secondary school girls and 16 per cent of boys are seriously worried about being raped. (SOS Children's Villages Hungary research 2016.)
Why is YELON unique?
- Yelon treats the sexual education of children as an inextricable part of their overall upbringing. The contents provided on the website address questions which can help the healthy development of self- and body image and sexuality, questions to which children and young people might not find reliable answers from other sources.
- The content of the website is extended relying on the topics of the chat conversations.
- The chat is free of charge and can be used without registration and anonymously.
- Closed conversations are deleted automatically from the phone or the computer and are not saved by Yelon either.
- The chat service is run by volunteers highly trained in the Foundations's self-developed training program.
- Participation of children between the ages of 13 and 18 in all project phases has been a successful practice from the start of the Yelon project.
Is YELON a Hungarian initiative?
Yelon is a project developed exclusively by Hintalovon Child Rights Foundation, Hungary (www.hintalovon.hu). Our vision, mission and services were established by the professional staff of the Foundation and highly influenced by the child participants: our teenage voluntary group aged 13 to 18. We were also inspired by some similar foreign sites.
Particular donors, financial supporters of Yelon: Telenor Hungary, Flemish Government, Lush Hungary.