Our volunteers are a huge part of Scarleteen, and I call them superstars with very good reason. They're all incredible.

They play a big part in providing our direct services at our message boards and through our text-in answer service. They are our invaluable collective editorial board: even when volunteers aren't part of writing a piece, every piece we publish goes past at least some of them and their input is priceless. They're an equal part of all conversations about how we run things here, collectively informing and making decisions about how we manage and administrate the site and organization. They are a strong support circle: for all of us as a staff, for each other, for our users. They are a brilliant hivemind: our backend chat channel for staff and volunteers has had some amazing, inspired conversation about the issues we address here at Scarleteen. Most of our volunteers also started out at Scarleteen as users, so they come in with a lot of knowledge about being a user here,...

Starting in 2006, for NOW's Love Your Body Day, our volunteers, staff and users have been creating haiku about body love and acceptance on our message boards.

It's resulted in some fantastically cool pieces over the years, so we figured we'd share a few of them today as it's that fine day yet again!

dry mouth crooked teeth
smiling never stops despite
himself, filling doubt
- foraday

Fuller or thinner
My luxurious body
Rejoices to live
- Juniata

"Ew, don't wear tight stuff."
Said to me some years ago
Finally past it
- Hyancithe

Chopsticks might seem nice
But I walk on prized columns
So show some respect
- Insecure-Poetry

my eyes, almond-shaped
brown like the good earth, birthright.
china's descendant.
- winsome

my feet are too big?
mom, look at how I stand here
stable on this earth
- bluejumprope

Big tits, big round bum
but comes with a little tum,
it's proportional.
- Lady

skin hangs loose, with marks
from my belly, he emerged
tiny baby feet
- Alice

Dark as chocolate,
Warm and kin...

In my experience it feels like there are two crowds, those who are 'cool' and have frequent sexual activity, hookups etc both in and out of relationships (or at least portray themselves as doing so) and those who are 'pure' who have decided at this point to abstain from sex until marriage, who are frequently Christian or otherwise religious. I think there's pressure to fit into one of those groups, either to go out and have lots of sex or to not have sex at all. There is stigma from both sides to each other, the cool group think the pure group are 'frigid' and boring, the pure group think the cool group are disrespecting themselves and God or something along those lines. If you're not willing to put yourself in either box then you can cop it from both sides. And if you are out LGBTQ then chances of fitting in either group are slim to none. I'm not sure if this is how it is for other people but that's how it feels to me in the last few years.

That's from Caitlin, a member of our commun...

(...or a counselor, LGBTQ center, doula, shelter, rape crisis center or other in-person sexual/reproductive health, sexuality and/or crisis care serving teens and young adults!)

As a youth-serving organization which provides most of our services online, we're all too aware the internet has limits. You can't get tested for chlamydia or pregnancy online. You can't get ongoing, one-on-one counseling or therapy where your counselor can hand you a tissue when you need one. The internet can't provide anyone a warm bed or a meal, an IUD, pre-natal care or an abortion. Google can't provide us HIV healthcare or emergency contraception.

As part of what we do, we refer users to offline services, but many of our users are often reluctant to seek out in-person services we or others can't directly vouch for. Years ago, we began to notice that when one of our users told another near them about a service they used and liked, or when one of our staff could vouch for having gone to a service ourselves,...