Imagine a good day at work. Does it involve a classroom of teenagers and an enormous model of a penis? Probably not. But it does for Shelagh Johnson, the youth HIV prevention coordinator for Cascade AIDS Project.

How are you going to learn about anatomy in a way thats different from any other science class that youve been in? she says she asked a room full of teenagers during one of her recent visits to a sex ed class. So I said to them, With whatever materials you have in the classroom, I want this side of the room to make female genitals, and this side of the room to make male genitals. And soon it became this huge competition.

Is sculpture an effective way to teach teens about sexuality? Johnson says the students thought so: After they were done, I said, OK, we need to clean up now, because the room was totally trashed, and one of them said to me, This is the best class ever!

As the head of CAPs youth outreach programs, Johnson, 32, who has been teaching sexuality education for the past six years, spends a lot of time talking to teens, both in and out of the classroom. She also supervises CAPs Teen 2 Teen volunteers, who help spread the message of HIV awareness among their peers.

Johnson says one of her biggest challenges is reaching youth who arent exactly eager to learn about safe sexual behavior. Really, my role is to prevent HIV in youth, but youth dont see it as something they need to prevent, she says. So you have to make it relevant, and one of the ways to do that is to make it cool.

So how do you make HIV awareness cool? Johnson uses low-key social marketing techniques: We enlisted some of our Teen 2 Teen volunteers who were really creative and crafty, and they came up with great slogans and great designs, and we started making buttons.

The buttons, with slogans like Love is radical and I ?to cuddle, have been so successful that theyre turning into a source of revenue for Johnsons work. If we can charge people for the buttons, if we can have people buying those, all the money goes back to youth HIV prevention, she says. And potentially youre looking at a profit of enough money to pay for the program.