Tony Nguyen: Sex Educator
 Salary: $30,000 - $35,0000
Tony Nguyen spends his time on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood or in the gay bars and clubs on Polk Street. He is usually armed with a bag of condoms, lots of information about safe sex and a very open mind.
As the coordinator for the API Wellness Center’s MSM (men who have sex with men) program, Nguyen coordinates outreach focused on issues of sex and HIV in different Asian American communities.
Nguyen, who studied drafting in college, became involved in safe-sex education as a volunteer over 10 years ago.
“I had a friend who contracted HIV around the same time I decided to come out,” Nguyen says. He and other friends began to go to meetings to educate themselves and meet other people in their community.
“In a way, it was really good for me because it was a way for me to get involved,” Nguyen says. “People always equate HIV with gay people and I saw that there was a real need for education.”
Most sex educators start off the same way Nguyen did: by volunteering their time and obtaining public health or community health training. One can be certified as a community health educator by completing some 30 or 50 hours of training, which varies from state to state. Nguyen says that the actual time for certification to be a sex educator is very short, but experience goes a long way in this field.
“You really learn this job day-to-day,” he says. “It is by dealing with different situations and learning how to talk to people about these issues. It is hard to say how long it really takes.”
Nguyen is probably the most experienced sex educator working with the Vietnamese American community in the Bay Area. He spends a lot of time doing outreach to Vietnamese businesses and other community spaces. Because sex is so taboo in most Asian cultures, Nguyen says that his job has much to do with breaking down barriers.
“The hardest part of the job is that people are in denial about sex,” Nguyen says. “Especially in the Vietnamese culture, we don’t talk about sex — we do it, but don’t talk about it. I have to change that.”
Nguyen runs workshops on everything from basic safe-sex tips to coming out of the closet to HIV. He also does couples and one-on-one counseling.
“Beyond the basic knowledge that you can get from training, you really have to have compassion to do this,” Nguyen says.
The most rewarding part of this work is getting people to be safe and use condoms, Nguyen says. Also, helping people to be comfortable with themselves.
“There are so many personal stories, small triumphs that I hear about every day from working with people one-on-one that is so satisfying,” Nguyen says. “But there is so much more work to be done also.” |
