About Us
Samara Lillioja, LMSW, CSE
(they/them)
Founder
Samara is a queer, disabled sexuality educator whose work focuses on centering disabled perspectives. After receiving their Masters in Social Work with a focus on Sexual Health Education for Queer Populations, they went on to teach a healthy relationships and sexual health program to disabled students. During this time, they also became an AASECT certified Sexuality Educator.
Their approach to education combines both lived and professional experience in order to broaden the visibility of disabled people in the sexuality field. They strive to create open, non-judgmental spaces that prioritize curiosity, creativity, and play to demystify the worlds of sexuality and sensuality.
Access Sex Ed
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We believe that pleasure and intimacy are human rights. Everyone deserves relationships filled with understanding and joy — and everyone deserves information and support to help make that happen.
We strive to create shame-free, non-judgmental spaces for and by disabled people to explore their curiosity about relationships and sexuality. Through one on one support, group workshops, curriculum writing, professional development opportunities, and cultural competency consulting, Access Sex Ed’s work is rooted in the belief that everyone deserves to have the tools to create the relationships they want to have.
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At Access Sex Ed, we believe in the healing power of curiosity and play, neither of which are accessible without autonomy and self-determination. We reject the compliance training model prevalent within many disabled spaces and instead prioritize accessibility and understanding.
In centering disabled voices and experiences, we make space for everyone to playfully explore their curiosities without shame, always with the goal of increasing access to pleasure.
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Access Sex Ed was born out of dozens of conversations with sexuality professionals, disability professionals, and therapists who did not have the resources they needed to competently address topics at the intersections of sexuality, disability, and mental health.
With both professional and lived experience at these intersections combined with a passion for education and curiosity, Samara created Access Sex Ed to increase disabled visibility and representation in conversations on pleasure and intimacy.