This Valentine’s Day, Standup For Kids, an organization aimed at helping homeless and street kids, is asking everyone to help put a face on youth homelessness. Standup for Kids has partnered with Do 1 Thing, an organization comprised of ward-winning photographers, journalists, editors, designers, and writers who have come to together to shine a light into the many dark places that affect the most vulnerable children and teens.

When I lived in NYC, I volunteered with a non-residential homeless center for teens, and I remembering thinking it was outrageous that a city full of so much wealth and prosperity had more than 100,000 teens living on the streets, many of whom were prostituting themselves to the wealthy and prosperous just to survive. Think it’s not a big problem? Here are some recent stats:

• 1.3 million runaway and homeless youth live on the streets of the U.S. today
• parental substance abuse is the largest predictor of runaway behavior in youth
• 41% of runaway youth had been abandoned by caregivers for at least 24 hours, and 43% had been beaten by their caretaker
• more than 25% of youth runaways have had caregivers request sexual activity

Though the problem is daunting, there are things you can do to make a difference. Standup for Kids and Do 1 Thing have some suggestions to get you started:

• Support a local Standup for Kids Program by conducting a food or clothing drive outside a mall, movie theatre, church or school.
• As you and your friends upgrade, collect old cell phones that can be used by homeless youth (email when you’re ready to send your phones for more info).
• Spread the word and create awareness about the plight of homeless youth with an email campaign. Click here to get started.

Have you ever been cyberbullied or approached by a sexual predator while online? Do you know all the do’s and don’ts of online safety? If you’re like many teens, your parents are the ones who try to talk with you about how to be safe while blogging, IMing, Facebooking (is that a word?), and the like, but do they really know enough about what you’re doing online and how the technology works to be helpful?

Enter LMK: Life Online. Created by the Girl Scouts (in partnership with Microsoft), LMK was created to empower you so you can educate others on the reality of being a teen online and help adults understand the real issues that affect you every day. The cooly-designed, interactive experience allows girls to share their online concerns with peer “tech-perts” about the issues that affect them while raising awareness about how to help keep girls safe while surfing the Web.

Every month on LMK, the all-girl editorial board explores a different internet safety topic, including: Social Networking, Online Sexual Predators, Cyberbullying, Privacy, Cybersecurity, Netiquette, and many more. Each topic is explored through articles, quizzes, and videos.

I love this site… kudos to the Girl Scouts and Microsoft for empowering girls to be smart about their online lives!

If you haven’t read any of Micol Ostow’s fantabulous YA novels, now is definitely the time to start. The first book in her new series (!), The Bradford Novels, just came out, and to create a giant ol’ launch splash, Micol and Simon & Schuster are hosting the Bradford Novels Blog Bash.

Over at the Blog Bash, you can get the inside scoop from Micol, read all about the new series, and watch a book trailer for the first book which just came out two weeks ago, . Plus, Micol has invited a ton of her favorite Awesome Authors to be guests of the party, and each day you can read a new, exclusive interview with a different author.

I’m especially excited about today, because the featured author is…me! Click here to find out about the biggest scandal to happen at my high school back in the day, the worst thing I ever did to a friend, my favorite Grace Kelly movie, and more. You can also catch up on interviews with Julie Linker (Disenchanted Princess, Crowned), Carrie Jones (Need), Niki Burnham (Do-Over), Jenn Echols (Going Too Far), Jessica Verday (The Hollow), Nick Eliopulos (First Kiss, Then Tell), Lisa McMann (Wake, Fade), Nina Malkin (Swoon), Eileen Cook (What Would Emma Do?), and more to come!

Congratulations Micol!

This week is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week, and if anything, the much-reported altercation between Chris Brown and Rhianna last weekend only shows that no one is safe from this serious trend. Teen dating violence is a described as “a pattern of controlling behaviors by one teenager over another teenager with whom they are in a dating relationship.” And it’s more common than you might think. Here are some surprising facts and statistics:

• 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner
• 1 in 3 teens reports knowing a friend or peer who has been hit, punched, kicked, slapped, or physically hurt by their dating partner
• only 33% of teens who were in an abusive relationship ever told anyone about the abuse

Wow. Those are some pretty shocking figures, especially that last one. Because if people aren’t opening up and getting real about what’s really going on, nothing’s ever going to change.

If you’re in a relationship and something doesn’t quite feel right to you, listen to that voice inside your gut. Because a healthy relationship should never make you feel bad, insecure, worthless, disrespected, or guilty.

Here’s an abridged list of signs of an abusive relationship as outlined by the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. Something’s not right in your relationship if your a boyfriend or girlfriend:

• calls you names, puts you down, or belittles you in front of other people
• checks up on you through text messages/phone calls to see where you are/who you are with
• keeps you away from your friends and family
• has to know where you are and who you are with at all times, and insists that you spend all your time together
• checks up on you at home, work, and school and insists you carry a cell phone so he/she can reach you
• threatens to hurt himself/herself or others if you break up with him/her

For more information, and to find out how to help yourself or a friend in an abusive relationship, check out Love is Not Abuse, End Abuse, or See it and Stop it.

UPDATE: Check out MTV’s video on teen dating violence here!

Even if you didn’t want to know what’s going on with the economy, it’s kind of hard to avoid it. Talk of the U.S. financial crisis is the hot topic on TV, radio, in newspapers, and just about anywhere else info is dispensed.

And apparently, you’re tuning in, according to a recent article in USA Today (A Generation Adjusts as Teens Confront a Harsh Economy). “Except for boy-girl relationships, the economy is the number one topic with kids right now,” says Jim Taylor, Vice Chairman of The Harrison Group.

So much of the news has been about how the economy is affecting adults (the job market, pensions, insurance, mortgages), but what about teenagers? Because even with part time jobs, many rely heavily on their parents to cover the basics and give them a decent allowance to cover the cost of things like college tuition, prom, vacations, hang out time with friends, music, dating, clothes, a car, and video games.

So how can you keep a healthy attitude about money and not let the economy stress you out? Here are my 6 Recession Survival Tips for Teens:

1. Don’t obsess over the news – turn off the radio or TV when the anchors start talking about the stock market this and the recession that. You can’t change what’s going on, so there’s no point in dwelling on it.
2. Take my Spend-Free Week Challenge – go for one week without spending a penny (pack your lunches, make your coffee at home, get your movies and books from the library, not the store, walk or bike to places, and so on.
3. Don’t buy new – how many of us have way more than we could possible ever need? So find ways to reuse, recycle, and swap things you’d normally buy (ie: skip the sale at The Gap and have a clothes swap with your friends instead).
4. Get creative – adversity can be the spark for innovation. Brainstorm creative ways to earn a little extra cash by thinking outside the box – hold a yard sale, tutor, cash in recyclables at the grocery store, participate in focus groups, etc. For more ideas, visit Kids Making Money.
5. Start taking control of your money – track your incoming cash and outgoing expenses by keeping a simple spreadsheet for one week. You may be surprised to discover what you’re actually spending your money on! Once you get a good sense of where your finances stand, you can start making smart choices about how much you want to earn, spend, and save.
6. Hang in there – history shows us that economic downturns are part of the financial cycle. So, know that this too shall pass!

Do you have any great money-saving tips or advice for how you’re weathering the recession? If you’ve got ’em, share ’em!

For more ideas on making and saving money, check out . And for more ideas on how to not get stressed out about the economy, check out my book !

Today’s feature organization is The Girl Effect. Actually, The Girl Effect is more of a movement than an organization…a movement to empower the 600 million adolescent girls in the developing world to be agents of change and make the world a better place.

And in the developing world, being a girl has many challenges:

• One quarter of girls are not in school
• One in seven girls marries before the age of 15
• One quarter to one half of girls become a mother before the age of 18
• Girls in India who are married before they’re 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped, or threated by their husbands as were girls who married later
• 75% of 15 to 24 year olds living with HIV in Africa are female

The people behind The Girl Effect realized that up until now, the potential benefits of investing in girls’ economic growth and health have been completely ignored. But the research shows that when you change a girl, you really can change the world.

Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.

The Girl Effects wants you to help make girls visible by become a supporter. To find out more and become a fan on Facebook, . And don’t forget to check out the cool while you’re there…it will definitely get you inspired!

It seems like every time I flip open a magazine or turn on a talk show, someone’s talking about teens and sex – how much they’re doing it, how risky the sex they’re having is, how teen pregnancy is the latest fad. Of course, it’s not the first time the media has grabbed hold of an idea and run with it. And let’s face it, the idea that today’s teens are increasingly promiscuous is one that’s going to get a lot of attention, especially from parents who get completely freaked out by the subject.

I can understand this reaction, if there was was any truth behind the headlines. But studies show it’s not necessarily the case. A recent article in The New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope (“The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity”) points out that “while some people are clearly engaging in risky sexual behavior, a vast majority are not. The reality is that in many ways, today’s teenagers are more conservative about sex than previous generations.” In fact, according to the article:

• In 2007, fewer than half of all high school students (47.8%) had had sex, while in 1991, 54.1% had
• In 2002, only 30% of high school girls had experienced sex, while in 1995, 38% had

While it’s true that in 2007 births among 15-19 year olds had risen for the first time in more than ten years (National Center for Health Statistics), that certainly doesn’t constitute a “trend.” And many researchers believe the recent increase in teen pregnancy isn’t because more teens are having sex, but because fewer are using contraception.

What do you think? Is there any truth behind the hype or is this just another chance for the media to use fear to grab an audience?

Whether teens are having more or less sex, the one thing I know is that education is the most important piece of this equation. Luckily, there are a ton of resources out there to help teens become informed and learn about the real consequences of their choices, whatever they may be. Check out the website hosted by Rutger’s University, Sex, Etc. to get honest answers from experts and teens, and tap into a ton of resources.

Hi Smart Girls,

Just a quick note to say that we’re having some problems with our mail server for Smart Girls Know and as a result, subscribers may have received a post from about two weeks ago in their inbox this morning. My apologies for the random contact, and please know that we’re doing our best to work out all the kinks so it doesn’t happen again!

Thank you and Happy Friday!!

XO Debbie

I wanted to share news of a new writing contest being hosted by Simon & Schuster and fellow YA author, Lisa McMann (author of and ). Just answer the question “What is the great obstacle you’ve overcome” in an essay no longer than 500 words to enter. Lisa will choose a winner, who will receive $1,000 towards meeting his or her life goals!

The contest is open to boys and girls 14-18 years old, and has a submission deadline of March 6, 2009. You can read all the official rules and submit your essay on Lisa’s website. Good luck!

For the month of February, I Heart Daily, the new, free online newsletter featuring the latest and greatest in style, entertainment, beauty, and news for girls, has teamed up with RED the book to create RED Hearts. Through RED Hearts, the teen girls behind the fantastic book
are sharing their thoughts and recommendations about what they’re listening to, reading, watching, and thinking about.

I Heart Daily and RED seem like a match made in heaven, and I love that these RED Hearts are giving girls a voice to share what’s on their mind and be trendsetters in their own, unique way.

To see today’s RED Heart, written by 19 year old Jordyn Turney who explains her love for the original Agent 99 in the 1960’s classic show Get Smart, or to sign up so you don’t miss out on future RED Hearts, visit the site here!