Yesterday, Men Can Stop Rape launched their new bystander intervention campaign geared towards addressing sexual violence on college campuses. “Where Do You Stand?” uses a number of tools such as trainings, posters, and media materials to encourage young men to become active bystanders to end sexual violence.

According to Men Can Stop Rape’s press release, “Where Do You Stand? continues Men Can Stop Rape’s commitment to primary prevention by creating everyday solutions to prevent men’s violence against women and girls,” said Men Can Stop Rape Executive Director, Neil Irvin. “This campaign builds on young men’s ability, desire, and commitment to being strong without being violent.”

Continue reading to view the full text of the press release.

PRESS CONTACT: Amy Terpeluk
Tel: (212) 593-2792
Cell: (917) 826-2326
amy@finnpartners.com

COLLEGE MEN LAUNCH WHERE DO YOU STAND?, A NEW NATIONAL INTERVENTION PROGRAM TO STOP SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUSES

Leading men’s prevention organization, Men Can Stop Rape, collaborates with American Association of University Women to increase the number of men on campus who intervene to prevent dating violence and sexual assault

WASHINGTON, D.C. – January 31, 2012 – Today, Men Can Stop Rape, a leading national organization mobilizing boys and young men to prevent violence against women, is launching a new nationwide intervention movement to empower college men to speak up and prevent violence on campus.

This new push to build safer college campuses is a direct result of the many recent incidents of rape, sexual assault and dating violence that have occurred on campuses. Sixty two percent of undergraduate students say they have encountered some type of sexual harassment⁽¹⁾, and a recent survey shows that nearly half (43 percent) of all dating college women report having ever experienced violent or abusive dating behaviors ⁽²⁾.

Men Can Stop Rape is taking an entirely new approach to preventing these incidents. For the first time, they are focusing on male bystanders who witness potentially violent situations and teaching them how to step in before situations escalate into actual physical or sexual violence.

This initiative involves several elements including the launch of an innovative public awareness campaign called Where Do You Stand?. This campaign uses a variety of media materials including billboards, posters and t-shirts, displaying provocative visuals and messages that illustrate how easy it can be for men to speak up and prevent violence.Where Do You Stand? also uses bystander intervention trainings and peer-education sessions that equip them with the necessary skills and tools to intervene.

“Where Do You Stand? continues Men Can Stop Rape’s commitment to primary prevention by creating everyday solutions to prevent men’s violence against women and girls,” said Men Can Stop Rape Executive Director, Neil Irvin. “This campaign builds on young men’s ability, desire, and commitment to being strong without being violent. We look forward to using Where Do You Stand? to deepen existing relationships and build new partnerships with college campuses across the country.”

The collaboration with the American Association of University Women’s 100,000 members nationwide, illustrates the spirit of teamwork that Men Can Stop Rape aims to incorporate onto every campus where this new campaign will take root. Men Can Stop Rape hopes to continue to build these powerful collaborations with women’s groups to help support existing rape and violence prevention programs on campuses and to increase these groups’ resources by bringing men and women together around these important issues.

“It’s crucial that both women and men address sexual harassment and violence on campus. This is not just a women’s issue,” said AAUW Program Manager, Holly Kearl. “By joining forces, we can work together to challenge the culture that fosters those dangerous behaviors, involve more men and give all students nationwide the tools they need to be part of the solution.”

The initiative will also seek to increase the presence of Men Can Stop Rape student leaders on college campuses by building more student-led chapters of their Campus Men Of Strength (MOST) Clubs. MOST Club members serve as activists for violence prevention on campus. They facilitate trainings, plan events and partner with other community and campus organizations to educate men about stereotypes that perpetuate violence, different ways to approach potentially dangerous situations and how to overcome men’s reluctance to confront their peers when they see unhealthy interactions they suspect could become dangerous.

Today, college men from Georgetown, American University and George Washington University, along with area high school students, will come together at Georgetown with collaborators from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and the School and College Organization of Prevention Educators (SCOPE, www.wearescope.org) to launch this new violence intervention movement at a meeting of Men Can Stop Rape student leaders.

“Intervening in the presence of disrespect toward a woman can be easier said than done,” said Matt Scott, sophomore at George Washington University and Campus MOST Club member. “Everybody faces challenges in life where women, and men for that matter, are being degraded in front of them. It is tough to know how to handle it but Men Can Stop Rape makes it easier for men to challenge stereotypes and take a stand.”

Universities across the country have already requested the new Where Do You Stand?intervention materials and programs and are highly anticipating the opportunity to introduce this national campus movement to their students. Additionally, partners from the District of Columbia Office of Victim Services have joined with Men Can Stop Rape with the goal of distributing Where Do You Stand? materials to campuses city wide. The college men leading this movement are working to ensure every campus has violence and sexual assault prevention and intervention programs in place.

The Where Do You Stand? materials, trainings and programs and the Campus MOST Club programming are available to be activated on campuses nationwide. For more information about Men Can Stop Rape, visit www.mencanstoprape.org.

About Men Can Stop Rape
Men Can Stop Rape is the leading national organization mobilizing boys and men to prevent violence against women. The program has reached over 2 million boys and men in the past 10 years with a message of “strength without violence.” Men Can Stop Rape’s cutting-edge prevention programs are grounded in the social ecological model which recognizes that individual actions profoundly affect entire communities and ultimately all of society. Utilizing a proven curriculum, awareness campaigns, prevention and intervention trainings and programming, Men Can Stop Rape is engaging men and boys to build safer and healthier communities. For more information about Men Can Stop Rape, visit www.mencanstoprape.org.

¹ Harris Interactive® online survey conducted on behalf of the AAUW Educational Foundation, 2005

² Liz Claiborne Inc.’s Love Is Not Abuse 2011 College Dating Violence and Abuse Poll, 2011

As I have been reading all of the news about the sexual abuse at Penn State, Syracuse and others, I see a lot of anger at a few individuals who do not act or did not do enough. In his recent article in the Huffington Post, Larry Cohen of the Prevention Institute clearly states that we have to consider what institutional changes needs to take place to prevent sexual abuse:

Of course, we all know that it is not a child’s job to protect themselves from sexual abuse and the predators that perpetuate it; it is the job of the adults and institutions that surround him or her. It is not one or two individuals who have failed the survivors of child rape and sexual assault at Penn State, Syracuse University, and in our churches and schools across the country. We are failing our children. We have created a system that often colludes with perpetrators, supports them and creates a norm that allows sexual assault and child rape to continue. And by blaming individuals alone, we lose the opportunity to upend that system and create policies and systems that protect our children, instead of perpetuating harm.

I agree with Larry when he says that “we must re-examine and revise policies and practices to not only ensure reporting but promote a climate that insists on the safety and health of our children in the first place.” As I said when I spoke last month in Idaho, we need to go beyond describing the problem of sexual abuse, we have to promote the solutions. Not only the individual solutions, but community-wide prevention and policy solutions.

How do we create prevention messages that work? In the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Moving Upstream, the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance’s prevention newsletter, Brad Perry shares six principles of “sticky” ideas, a concept articulated by Chip and Dan Health in their book Made to Stick, in part 2 of his article We Talk – Do They Listen?: Effectively Expressing Primary Prevention Messages. The six principles of stickiness are

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Click here to see the entire newsletter (Volume 7, Issue 2).

This is the last issue of Moving Upstream that Brad Perry will edit. Over the past seven years this newsletter has been a valuable contribution to sexual violence and domestic violence practitioners. I appreciate how much good work that Brad has done that helps everyone in this field. I have had the opportunity to co-write an article on sexual violence prevention with him and Lydia Guy Ortiz, discuss prevention theory and practice into the night,and enjoy many wonderful meals talking about music with Brad over the years. I wish Brad the best as he is learning more about how to create effective prevention messages.

he October 2011 issue of Forced Migration Review has an article titled Preventing partner violence in refugee and immigrant communities that discusses some of the promising practices that are part of Robert Wood Johnson Foundations’ Preventing Partner Violence in Immigrant Communities: Strengthening What Works Initiative.

The promising practices are:

• Engage young people whose attitudes are still forming
• Address multiple and overlapping layers of discrimination
• Engage spiritual and community leaders
• Target unhealthy traditional or religious practices
• Overcome shame and stigma
• Draw on informal networks of support
• Challenge community norms that tolerate IPV
• Include men and women in programming
• Build community capacity or “social capital”

How does your organization work with immigrant communities to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence?

Click here for a link to this article by Greta Uehling, Alberto Bouroncle, Carter Roeber, Nathaniel Tashima and Cathleen Crain.

PreventConnect.org

Lydia Guy Ortiz spoke in Denmark about primary prevention.

Three years ago I had the opportunity to attend the first Danish national conference on primary prevention of violence against women prevention in Copenhagen, Denmark. I shared my impressions of prevention trends in the United States so people in Denmark could consider how to start primary prevention efforts.

In Mach 2011, Lydia Guy Ortiz went to speak in Denmark about primary prevention. In this interview, she shares her impressions. Also, check out her blogs about her visit to Denmark at LGO Consulting‘s web site.

Lydia Guy Ortiz on Primary Prevention in Denmark

PreventConnect.org

Some of the most exciting prevention efforts are those taking place internationally. From South Africa to India to Brazil, I have seem tremendous ways to prevent gender based violence (which seems to be the term used outside the United States.) I believe that prevention efforts in the United States can learn from those efforts. For example, EngenderHealth is adapting Program H from Promundo‘s work in Brazil to work in school here in the States.

Check out this video of Andrew Levack of EngenderHealth discuss his presentation at the 2010 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting  “Addressing gender norms in schools in New York City and Los Angeles: Lesson from the adaptation of an evidence-based program in Brazil.”

PreventConnect.org

Kasia Reterska from Fenton will share how to frame data to make the case for prevention.

Join Fenton, a social justice communications firm, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others from the PreventConnect national community of prevention practitioners for a conversation about framing data to make the case for primary prevention. On September 20, 2011, PreventConnect will hold a web conference titled Framing Data to Demonstrate the Need for Primary Prevention. (the session will be repeated on September 21, 2011.

This fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release initial results of the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). The new data about intimate partner violence, sexual violence and a stalking will create opportunities to raise awareness about the prevalence of these public health problems and to make the case for prevention. In this web conference, we will discuss NISVS and its messaging implications for the field, explore tools for creating a strong message framework around IPV/SV/stalking data, and workshop questions solicited from the field in advance of the web conference. This information will provide practitioners with the knowledge necessary to develop strong messages about the data and the need for primary prevention in order to reach a variety of constituents.

This web conference is part of a series of PreventConnect web conferences that prepare prevention practitioners to use data to make the case for prevention.

Click here to join this web conference.

©Men Can Stop Rape. Used with permission.

Men Can Stop Rape has just released its newest comprehensive bystander intervention program for men called Where Do You Stand? This program is designed to implement on college campuses.  This program builds on the strength of their Strength Campaign by including positive messages, promoting  healthy masculinity, and having action recommendations that highlight what can be done.

Click here to see the Were Do You Stand? Campaign Guide.

I strongly believe that good prevention efforts have to go beyond working to end what we do not like. We need prevention efforts to promote what we want to see.  For example, many teen dating violence prevention efforts  seek to promote healthy relationships.  So what do we want to promote for sexual violence prevention?

One answer is described in the new report Healthy sexuality for sexual violence prevention: A report on promising curriculum-based approaches from the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance. In the report helathy sexuality is defined as

… the capacity to understand, enjoy, and control one’s own sexual and reproductive behavior in a voluntary and responsible manner that enriches individuals and their social lives.

This report recommends several programs programs as promising healthy sexuality curricula. This programs are

• Our Whole Lives Lifespan Sexuality Education Curricula from the Universalist Unitarian Association,
• Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program from Advocates For Youth,
• Care For Kids from Leeds, Grenville, & Lanark Health District, Ontario, CA,
• Family Life And Sexual Health (FLASH) Curricula from King County Office of Public Health (Washington) .

What you do think about healthy sexuality programs to prevent sexual violence.

Click here to see this report.

PreventConnect.org

VAWnet's Casey Keene describes the new special collect on DELTA

DELTA is a prevention program close to my heart. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national program to advance the primary prevention of intimate partner violence funds fourteen state domestic violence coalitions to build the capacity of local communities to prevent domestic violence.  I had the opportunity to help coordinate one of these local programs in California when it started. Nine years later, I continue to learn about prevention work in communities from the great DELTA programs.

In this PreventConnect interview with Casey Keene, the manager of VAWnet, a project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, she discusses the new VAWnet Special Collection: Models in Prevention — CDC’s DELTA Program which highlights the intimate partner violence primary prevention work in 14 states during the last nine years.

Models in Prevention: CDC’s DELTA Program

Click here to see this special collection.

PreventConnect.org

Emily May of Hollaback

Join PreventConnect for our next web conference Diversifying Leadership: Building the Voice and Vision to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence on August 30, 2011 (repeated on August 31, 2011.) Emily May of Hollaback and  Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence‘s Jeff Matsushita will join Annie Lyles of Prevention Institute to explore strategies to find new voices to take the lead in preventing sexual and domestic violence.

We will discuss how to incorporate the voice and vision of the diverse communities we serve. Participants will learn new strategies to diversify leadership and how these strategies strengthen efforts to prevent sexual and domestic violence. Be ready to join the discussion by sharing ideas or posing questions to our guests via live phone and text chat.

Click here to register and get more information.

My Life, a primary prevention program for girls was highlighted at the 2011 CALCASA Leadeship Conference

At last week’s CALCASA Leadership Conference, several California Rape Crisis Centers gave presentations about the primary prevention work they are doing in their communities.  The stories we heard described how these prevention programs supported people in their communities to become agents of change.  As we were recognizing 40 years of a movement to end sexual violence, I see the next 40 years as creating some major shifts in social norms.

Tarah Fisher and Cynthia Patterson of the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center talked about MyLife, a primary prevention group for girls that helps them determine how to take action to change the social norms that contribute to sexual violence, such as offensive advertising. Hugo Rios of Fresno County’s Resources for Resource Center for Survivors of Sexual Assault and Family Violence described the work he does with young men through MyStrength – California’s adaption of the Men Can Stop Rape’s “My Strength is Not For Hurting” media campaign and Men of Strength Clubs.

Finally, Niko Johnson from Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalition in Grass Valley shared her experiences with Green Dot as her agency is planning to implement this bystander intervention program in a local high school. Inspired by the Green Dot training, she shared she had to reexamine  how she responds to situations she sees in her everyday life.

I provided a short overview of the trends in prevention. Click here for a list of the programs, materials and resources I highlighted.

These are only a few of the excellent examples primary prevention in California.  There are so many other examples. What is the primary prevention in action in your community?

While I was attending the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s iLEAD Conference in May 2011, I heard a great presentation from Terri Phoenix, Director at the LGBTQ Center at the University of North Carolina, on preventing sexual violence violence in LGBTQ communities. Check out this PreventConnect interview with her.

Bystander intervention is a critical component of the national movement to end sexual violence on college and university campuses

PreventConnect Reading Club

Programs to encourage bystanders to take action to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence have become recognized as promising approaches to primary prevention of violence.  In the June 2011 issue of the journal Violence Against Women, there are many articles sharing the results of research on the effectiveness of bystanders programs.

On July 28, 2011, join other PreventConnect prevention practitioners throughout the country in the July PreventConnect Reading Club to examine “Evaluation of Green Dot: Active Bystander Intervention to Reduce Sexual Violence on College Campuses” (Violence Against Women, June 2011 vol. 17 no. 6 777-796.)

PreventConnect Reading Clubs are small, one hour session where public health practitioners and researchers can discuss research and practice. This Reading Club, will focus on bystander intervention as a means to reduce sexual violence on campuses.

Reading Club Session

Thursday, July 28, 2011. This ninety minute (90 min) session will start at 11.00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time).

Registration is limited to 28 people per session.

To register, click here.

The Summer 2011 Issue of Partners in Social Change features articles about engaging men in sexual violence prevention.

“Will men take action to prevent sexual violence?” That was a question I  heard when I started in this work almost 30 years ago when I was among very few men engaged in this work.

I have seen a remarkable change, especially in the last ten years.  Now activists and rape prevention organizations actively seek to engage men to prevent rape. Slowly, more and more men recognize that rape prevention is important work for men.

Since 2005 CALCASA’s MyStrength Campaign supports young men to stand up and speak out against sexual violence. Through that campaign and other efforts I see more men at trainings, web conferences, rallies and meetings.

Now the question has shifted to “How can we support men take action to prevent sexual violence?” There is a wide variety of great efforts and resources including Men Can Stop Rape, Young Men’s Work, A CALL TO MEN, Office on Violence Against Women’s Engaging Men Initiative, Coaching Boys into Men, and so many more.

The Summer 2011 issue of Partners in Social Change is another resource that focuses on engaging men to prevent sexual violence. Here is a description of the contents of this resource:

The notion that men need to be involved in ending gender-based violence is not new by any means, but we want to take a look at how we can genuinely involve men as part of a movement that benefits everyone. Our first article is written by a male in our movement who wishes to examine how socially constructed male privilege has shaped his own experiences and also examines how other men can be a part of this movement with sincerity. We already know that some men are involved in this work and have contributed greatly, but what about the larger groups of men that are not involved? Our next two articles examine groups of men that are sometimes excluded from our messaging: queer men and “Average Joe”. Finally, we learn from one of our community sexual assault programs in Washington about the process of engaging men in their community.

Partners in Social Change is a prevention journal from the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs. Click here to see this issue.

I remember the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  But when times get tight, often prevention is the first thing to go.  The recently released report, National Prevention Strategy America’s Plan for Better Health and Wellness, places prevention front and center in our nation’s efforts. Prevention needs to be a key component of our efforts to build healthy, safe and respectful communities.

Larry Cohen of the Prevention Institute commented on the significance of this report:

For the first time the nation has delineated a broad, coherent approach to prevention, and made it clear that prevention is critical for improving our health. For too long, when people talk about health or healthcare, what comes to mind instead is illness. The Surgeon General herself said yesterday, “[As doctors] our biggest challenge is changing the way we think about health in this country.” But as the Strategy makes clear, prevention can save lives, reduce the demand on health care services, build equity and save money.

This report was released by the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council consisting of 17 heads of Federal departments, agencies, and offices including Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services. The report identifies that empowered individuals is essential to building effective prevention efforts.

One of the seven priorities is injury and violence prevention.  Esta Soler of Futures Without Violence said “We are pleased to see the National Prevention Strategy include addressing domestic and sexual violence and children’s exposure to violence as a critical element in our nation’s effort to improve the health and well-being of American families,”

The report specifically names school-based programs to prevent violence (such as bullying and teen dating violence) and intimate partner violence prevention efforts. In addition, sexual violence prevention efforts are specifically named in the priority areas of Reproductive and Sexual Health.

Click here for a copy of the report.

Last week UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet presented at a panel discussion in Geneva on “Good Practices and Remaining Gaps in the Prevention of Violence against Women” for Human Rights Council Annual Day. She described primary prevention as “…a new frontier in the field of violence against women.” Below are some of the prevention activities she highlights:

To stop the intergenerational transmission of violence against women, we must support expanded efforts to work with young people of both sexes to address gender equality and violence prevention, sustain social mobilization campaigns, and build commitment and capacity in the mass media to change the way that they portray women and report on issues of gender-based violence. Community mobilization that engages young people, men and shapers of customary values and public opinion, is particularly important. Real change will have to take place at local levels, where violence occurs, where community norms govern gender relations.

Click here for her full remarks.

Building vibrant sexual violence and domestic violence prevention programs require more than a curriculum and presentations. In the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of Moving Upstream, the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance‘s newsletter on primary prevention of sexual violence and domestic violence, there are several articles that that highlight how to raise funds for prevention and develop strong communications strategies.

Margaret Mikkelsen, Executive Director of Sexual Assault Resource Agency, discusses how her agency embarked on a “Campaign For Prevention” to raise funds. She wrote:

In our first fundraising letter for this campaign, we included a survey of teachers where we asked them to identify problem behaviors they see that are connected to SARA‘s work. They gave us a list that included examples of sexual harassment, older students coercing younger students into sex, bullying using homophobic slurs, etc. So then we connected our prevention work to all of these very real behaviors, describing how our programs positively impact each behavior. We talked about how we will see an increase in empathy, bystander skills, respect, personal boundaries, and an understanding about gender roles as a result of our prevention work.

In another article, Brad Perry looks at how to create sexual violence and domestic violence prevention messages that stick. He warns against creating messages that “preach to the converted” – that is those messages that are caught up in jargon, based on assumptions that are not accepted by the intended audience, and resonate only with prevention practitioners.

Click here to check out these articles. What do you think about this articles?

The Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance is holding its prevention conference Building Futures III on August 2-4, 2011 in Richmond, VA featuring many of the best prevention efforts such as Men Can Stop Rape, Bringing in the Bystander, Expect Respect, The Line, Youth Radio and Project Envision.  I will not able able to attend in-person this year, but recommend you check it out (unless you are in California where you should attend the CALCASA Leadership Conference.)

MyStrength.org

Every year, hundreds of young men in high school are impacted by the work of MyStrength facilitators across California. As these young men graduate and grow into the next phase of their lives, their experiences in MyStrength help them to develop into emotionally healthy, respectful, compassionate agents of change among their peers and in their communities.

The address below was given by Takeo Rivera – Artists, Scholar, and Assault Prevention & Intervention Specialist for the YWCA Silicon Valley Rape Crisis Center - to his 2011 graduating MyStrength Club members.

To Dylan, Eddie, Alex, Alex, Vincent, Brandon, Brandon, Brian, Juan, Luis, Victor, Alejandro, Semaj, and Michael: I want to thank you. Thank you for the deep conversations, the laughs, the willingness to be vulnerable, the inspiration. Today is for you, to celebrate you, for me to convey my gratitude for you always being there for each other, for me, and for this crazy world we live in.

As I’ve told you all before, my job as a rape crisis advocate is not an easy one. Every day, I work with victims of sexual assault and their loved ones. Rape is a crime that can destroy lives and torture souls, and 97-99% of perpetrators are men. It is easy to get depressed in this line of work, to give up, to get cynical. Believe me, I’ve had my moments; some days you’d see me maybe totally exhausted or with bags under my eyes. But every time I’ve had MyStrength with you all, you’ve always hardened my resolve, given me the courage to keep going. You all show me that not all men are like those perpetrators, that change is possible, and that high school students can be more righteous and true than many adults I know.

Our motto in MyStrength has been “My Strength is not for hurting,” but because of all of you, I now know what my strength is for. MyStrength is for honesty. MyStrength is for trust. MyStrength is for redefining who we are as men and as human beings. MyStrength is for envisioning a just society, an equitable society, where women are free from fear and oppression, and men are free from being the wielders of violence. MyStrength is for peace. MyStrength is for empathy. MyStrength is for the courage to shed tears, to tell our stories, to do what’s right so we can look ourselves in the mirror without shame. MyStrength is for leadership. MyStrength is for critical thought. MyStrength is for family.

You have been my family this past year; for some of you, two years. We’ve had some excellent times together. I remember riding up to Stanford for our field trip, with Dylan, Mario, Tai, Alex, Ruben, and Nick representing in a very big way that night (and eating In-N-Out afterwards). The incredible gender symposium we had that Sunday evening for the video, not to mention Tai, Alex, and Juan doing an amazing presentation to the students at Davis Intermediate afterward. Filming Alejandro, Brian, and Kaelum was a blast, too – I loved how many times Brian and Kaelum kept stopping themselves and restarting. The craziness that was Flag Day this year – and I wanna point out Oak Grove for being particularly excited to hang out with HerStrength afterwards. And then Walk-A-Mile in Her Shoes: Alejandro, Alex, Nick, and Ruben put on some amazing polka-dot heels to raise awareness in downtown San Jose, chanting our MyStrength

slogans and marching at the front of the procession, because you all were the face of what it means to be a male ally. You all made me so proud this year, and I hope you are just as proud of yourselves.

As you all know, this is my last year doing MyStrength, so just as you all are graduating from the program, so am I. When I think about leaving my job, MyStrength is the hardest part for me to let go of. Because of all of you and your incredible work, I will forever look back on MyStrength as a proud point of my career and of my life. And while I am leaving MyStrength and the YWCA, am not leaving this movement against violence that we all have worked so hard to help build. I will continue to devote myself towards the fight against oppression and inequality to the best of my abilities, and I hope – no, I know – that you all will do the same. It will not be easy, because fighting for justice rarely is. But it will be worth it, because fighting for justice always is. We probably will not see the end of rape, of sexism, of oppression, anytime in our lifetime; but our moral responsibility is to change what we can and to empower those around us to do the same, and it WILL matter, no matter how small that change is.

It has been a joy, an honor, to work with you fine young men. Thank you for letting me into your lives, and thank you for being such an integral part of mine. MyStrength is not for hurting.It is for you. Be you, and be the best you that you can be, because the world needs you. Now more than ever.

-Takeo Rivera

The June 2011 issue of the journal Violence Against Women will include many articles about research on bystander programs designed to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence. It is great to see so many articles looking at prevention programs.

Christine Gidycz

Check out this PreventConnect podcast interview with authors Christine Gidycz, Ph.D., and Alan Berkowitz, Ph.D., discussing their article “Preventing Sexual Aggression among College Men: An Evaluation of a Social Norms and Bystander Intervention Program.”

Other articles released online so far include

• Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, John D. Foubert, Hope M. Brasfield, Brent Hill, and Shannon Shelley-Tremblay, The Men’s Program: Does It Impact College Men’s Self-Reported Bystander Efficacy and Willingness to Intervene?
• Courtney E. Ahrens, Marc D. Rich, and Jodie B. Ullman, Rehearsing for Real Life: The Impact of the InterACT Sexual Assault Prevention Program on Self-Reported Likelihood of Engaging in Bystander Interventions
• Mary M. Moynihan, Victoria L. Banyard, Julie S. Arnold, Robert P. Eckstein, and Jane G. Stapleton, Sisterhood May Be Powerful for Reducing Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence: An Evaluation of the Bringing in the Bystander In-Person Program with Sorority Members
• Jackson Katz, H. Alan Heisterkamp, and Wm. Michael Fleming, The Social Justice Roots of the Mentors in Violence Prevention Model and Its Application in a High School Setting
• Ann L. Coker, Patricia G. Cook-Craig, Corrine M. Williams, Bonnie S. Fisher, Emily R. Clear, Lisandra S. Garcia, and Lea M. Hegge, Evaluation of Green Dot: An Active Bystander Intervention to Reduce Sexual Violence on College Campuses

This research gives us an opportunity to strengthen our prevention efforts using the bystander approach.

Gidycz and Berkowitz on Preventing sexual aggression among college men

Over the last month I have had the chance to speak in North Carolina and Texas about emerging trends in prevention.  Each time I have highlighted some exciting new efforts to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence.  And each time I make sure to talk about Hollaback, the international movement to end street harassment.  Over the last year Hollaback is growing all over the country and the world.  While I think this work is exciting, it is getting even better with its new I’ve Got Your Back campaign.

What a great idea to actually document when people are taking action to prevent violence.  This is a great example of prevention in action.

PreventConnect.org

Lisa Hoffman

Join PreventConnect for the next in our series of web conferences by build the case for prevention using data.  On June 8, we will hold the web conference From Data to Prevention: Framing Sexual and Domestic Violence Prevention Impact From a Cost-Effectiveness Perspective. Listen to Lisa Hoffman of Transforming Communities: Technical Assistance, Training and Resource Center and prevention practitioners discuss how to make the case for prevention using data. Click here to register today.

In these tough economic times, have you ever wondered how to make the case that your sexual assault and domestic violence prevention program is cost-effective? Would you like to learn how to better state your program’s impact to funders and other decision-makers? In this web conference, we will share a simple, 6-step process for framing how to evaluate prevention work and how invested resources are producing meaningful outcomes for ending violence against women. Participants will increase their understanding of why cost-effectiveness thinking is relevant to their organizations and receive concrete tools to apply these concepts in practical ways (e.g. program planning, evaluation and fundraising efforts). Through this web conference, we will also work toward building a unified analysis and talking points that can help all our prevention programs become more sustainable.

When: Wednesday, June 8, 2011

This ninety-minute (90 min) session will start at 11 AM Pacific Standard Time (2 PM Eastern) on June 8.

Host: David Lee, PreventConnect, California Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Guests: Chevon Kothari, Executive Director, Mountain Crisis Services; Liz Richards, Director of Programming, Minnesota Battered Women’s Coalition

Cost: Free

Click here to register now.

Learning Objectives:

1. Discussed how cost framing can be used to describe the impact of our prevention work.
2. Acquired a new vocabulary for articulating the benefits and cost-savings of our prevention work.
3. Explored the tool: 6 Steps for Making the Case for Your Prevention Program Through the Lens of Cost-Effectiveness.

What is a Web Conference

A web conference is an opportunity to attend an online workshop by watching a presentation on your computer screen (using your internet connection) and hearing presenters through your telephone. Prevent Connect web conferences feature an opportunity to participate in online question & answer sessions and live text chat between participants. If for some reason you are unable to join on your computer, you can download the presentation slides from our website and listen on your phone.

PreventConnect.org

One in Spirit

PreventConnect has released two podcasts that highlight recent efforts in California to prevent domestic violence. Transforming Communities Technical Assistance and Training Resource Center (TC-TAT) has recently released One in Spirit: Domestic Violence Advocates and Faith/Spiritual Leaders Working in Partnership to End Domestic Violence, an online resource that captures the rich dialogue, successes, lessons learned and strategic questions from involvement in more than eight years of domestic violence prevention in faith and spiritual communities, as well as the knowledge gathered from the 2010 Transfer of Knowledge Gathering.

(4 mins) Donna Garske, Executive of Director of Transforming Communities (a project of Center for Domestic Peace) an an overview of the agency’s work with faith communities to prevent domestic violence.

Donna Garske on working with faith communities

(10 mins) Rev. Bill Eichhorn talks about The Marin Faith Communities Nonviolence Project’s countywide campaign during the Season for Nonviolence to raise awareness about domestic violence and implement prevention strategies within Marin faith communities. A collaborative partnership was established between Community Congregational Church of Tiburon, Center for Domestic Peace and Marin Interfaith Council to advance the project’s efforts and expand community outreach. As a result of the project, one of the participating churches implemented a Safe Church Policy that includes zero tolerance for domestic violence as well as protocols for responding to abuse.

Rev. Bill Eichhorn on Marin Faith Communities Nonviolence Project

CALCASA's David Lee and NCCASA's Associate Director Robin Colbert at the NCCASA iLEAD Conference

This week I had the opportunity to speak at the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault‘s 2011 Annual Statewide Conference titled “iLead: Leading Everyday Advocating for a Difference.”  In the morning I spoke about Building a Movement for Social Change: Sexual Violence Prevention in Action where I explored the need to change community norms in order to prevent sexual violence.  Inspired by examples of leadership for social change (like the sit-ins in Greensboro in 1960), there are many new ways activists are working to prevent sexual violence like Hollaback, V Day and SPARK Summit.

I also lead a workshop on using Web 2.0 technologies. From that discussion, audience members suggested these web sites:

• RAINN
• The Center for Media Literacy
• Feministing
• The Community Tool Box
• That’s Not Cool
• National Institute of Corrections
• Advocates for Youth
• Jezebel.com
• Bitchmag.org
• Walkamileinhershoes.org
• Loveisnotabuse.com
• Chooserespect.org
• Men Can Stop Rape

Click here for the handout for these presentations.  What other resources do you recommend?

In May and early June I am looking forward to the remaining sessions of the regional training Enhancing our Primary Prevention Efforts: Intergenerational Partnerships, Engaging Youth and Social Change.  These interactive training sessions are a collaboration with the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, Transforming Communities Technical Assistance, Training and Resource Center (TC-TAT) and CALCASA and are sponsored by the California Department of Public Health, Violence Prevention Unit.

Click here to register today for the upcoming sessions in Los Angeles (May 2), San Diego (May 3), Sacramento (May 12) or San Luis Obispo (June 1).

Check out what these participants from the March 31 session in Oakland had to say about this training:

I already shared in a previous blog how much I appreciate the concept of intergenerational partnership that is explored in the training. I also find the Power Continuum from the California Center for Civic Participation to be very helpful in considering how we engage youth in our prevention efforts:

No Youth Participation:  Unchallenged authority of adults.
Tokenism: Adults set the agenda and make all the decisions.  One or two young people may be included, but often without training and without a promise that their suggestions will be taken.
Consultation: Adults seek advice from young people, but on terms set by adults.
Representation: A select number of young people are put forward as representing their peers, usually through a committee system and with varying degrees of accountability.
Mentoring: Adults provide encouragement and impart skills/values to help a young person achieve success.
Partnership: Young people and adults set the agenda together, decide on issues and activities, and have joint accountability and shared responsibility.

What type of youth engagement do you want for your organization?

Register today for these free trainings that will bring together prevention staff from California rape crisis centers and domestic violence agencies.  You are recommended to invite community partners you would like add to this conversation about promoting prevention. All sessions will start at 10:00 a.m. and end at 4:00 p.m.

Limited travel stipends are available upon request.

Just days after Vice President Joe Biden spoke eloquently about the need for men to take action against rape, I am pleased to join with over 40 other men who are national leaders in sexual violence prevention efforts to release the following statement sparked by the news coverage of the gang rape of an 11 year-old-girl in Cleveland, Texas

In the struggle to stop rape and all forms of men’s violence against women, it is time for men to leave the sidelines and get in the game. One important step we can take is to raise our voices and insist that the spotlight in media coverage of rape turns away from a fixation on victims and their behavior and instead focuses on abusive men and boys – and the culture that produces and makes excuses for them.  We make this demand not only as concerned citizens and responsible members of our communities – but as men from virtually every cultural/racial/ethnic/religious background.

There is some progress to report, albeit progress in response to yet another depressing reminder of how far we still have to come.  Consider this: reaction to the victim-blaming in a recent New York Times story about a brutal gang rape in East Texas has been fast and furious.  Over the past several weeks, columnists, bloggers, victim advocates and anti-rape activists – women and men – have criticized the March 8 Times story for the way its use of selective quotes suggested that an 11-year-old girl in effect contributed to the assault against her by “wearing make-up and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her twenties.”  In addition, critics have responded to the perception conveyed in the article that among the residents of Cleveland, Texas there is greater concern for the nineteen men and boys facing allegations of rape than for the young girl.

The Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane agreed with much of the criticism of the piece: “My assessment,” he wrote just a few days later, “is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.” (The Times front page follow-up story on March 28 did a lot better, offering an extended portrait of the girl, whom they described as having been “an honor roll student, brimming with enthusiasm.”)

This tragic case will provide lessons for future news writing classes and journalistic ethics seminars. Clearly, news operations need guidance about how to cover sex crimes without perpetuating misogynous cultural attitudes.

But for those of us who work to end men’s violence against women, this incident is less about the specific details of one horrific act of rape in a distressed community in Texas, and more about the broader themes of power,  privilege, misogyny, class and race that the act itself–and the coverage it generated – so poignantly exemplify.

We have to ask some difficult questions: why would a group of men and boys sexually violate a vulnerable 11-year-old girl?  What does this say not only about them or the small community where they live, but about the society – our society – that raised them?  “What are we teaching men and boys about their attitudes and behavior towards girls?” and even further…”What are we teaching men and boys about themselves?”

Because of the class, ethnicity, and race of those involved, some people will predictably attribute this atrocity to the effects of poverty and fatherlessness, which is a coded reference to family dysfunction in communities of color.  But gang rapes and the attitudes behind them are perpetrated by wealthy and middle-class white men and boys, too, including boys from “intact” families with present fathers.  Just last October at Yale University, DKE pledges marched on Old Campus– home to the majority of Yale’s first-year female students–chanting “No means yes” along with graphic sexual slurs that both demeaned women and glorified sexual violence.  White men with privilege routinely perpetrate unspeakable sexual crimes against women in their own families, as well as other women and girls. What’s the explanation for their sexist violence?

It seems to us that while questions of class and race are germane in this and many other cases, they are far less relevant than questions of gender.  In particular, unless we believe that males across the board are born genetically deficient, we need to ask some fundamental questions, i.e.: How do we socialize our boys?  How do we assign certain attitudes and behaviors as “normal?” And, ultimately: What does it mean to be a man in 21^st century America?

For too many young men, communal rituals of sexism perpetuate negative notions of manhood. Most of us are rightly horrified when we read about gang rape.  But group sexual assault is best understood as being at the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors that normalize men’s sexist treatment of women.  What about college guys hiring strippers for private parties and openly calling those women “bitches and hoes”?  And let’s not forget – an entire genre in pornography is devoted to simulated scenes of gang rape which in many quarters is considered socially acceptable entertainment for men, who sometimes watch it in groups.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this gang rape (as in others) is how often the alleged perpetrators videotape the event.  In the Cleveland, Texas assault, the police investigation was prompted, according to the Times, when an elementary school student alerted a teacher to a cell phone video that included one of her classmates. Why would men videotape an incident that literally documents their commission of a first-degree felony unless they thought 1) there was absolutely no chance of them being caught or 2) they weren’t doing anything wrong?

It is this last possibility that is most disturbing, because it implicates not just the men and boys who have been charged with the crime, but all of us.  What role does each of us play in defining and perpetuating social norms? Moreover, what is the responsibility of adult men not only to girls, but to boys?  What is the responsibility that each of us has to teach, mentor and model for younger men and boys non-sexist attitudes and behaviors toward women?

It is important to emphasize that we can primarily be concerned about the actual victim in this case and be empathetic with the boys and young men who are charged with this awful crime.  How many of them were coerced to participate by older adolescents and young adults?  How many of the younger boys acquiesced because they wanted to fit in and be respected as “one of the guys?”

Like other gang rapes, the East Texas case furnishes a powerful metaphor about silence and complicity, because gang rapes can often be prevented if just one guy takes a stand.  Can it really be true that there wasn’t one guy – or more — in the group who knew this was terribly wrong?  If so, then what were the internal dynamics of the group that prevented anyone from interrupting or stopping the process? Are men (and boys) so scared of each other that no one will speak out for fear that other men will think less of them, or worse, turn the violence on them?

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  But while awareness about sexual assault is a crucial first step, it is not enough. For men in particular, we need more of a willingness to act – both locally and globally. When men speak out about rape and other forms of violence against women, we make it clear to other men that we do not tolerate or condone the mistreatment of women.  We also send the message that men who mistreat women will face seriously negative social consequences for doing so – not just legal consequences.  Join us and the women who have been doing this work for years. Stand up and speak out for an end to sexual violence!

In peace and gender justice,

Bernardo Villafane, New Start Services
Byron Hurt
Charles Knight
Craig Norberg-Bohm, Jane Doe Inc.
Dasan Harrington
David S. Lee, PreventConnect / California Coalition Against Sexual Assault
David J. Pate, Jr. PhD., Center on Family Policy and Practice/University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Dick Bathrick, Bathrick Consulting
Don McPherson
Ed Gondolf, Ph.D.
Emiliano Diaz de Leon, Texas Association Against Sexual Assault
Etiony Aldarondo, Ph.D
Gary Barker, PhD, Promundo and MenEngage Alliance
Greg Jacob, Service Women’s Action Network
Horace Campbell
Ivan Juzang, Mee Productions
Jackson Katz, Ph.D.
Jeff O’Brien & Daryl Fort, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
Jeffrey L. Edleson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Joe Ehrmann, Coach for America
Joseph Maldonado, CONNECT Men’s Roundtable
Joshua Bee Alafia, Filmmaker
Juan Carlos Arean & Feroz Moideen, Family Violence Prevention Fund
Juan Ramos, North Brooklyn Coalition Against Family Violence
Kevin Powell
Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele
Michael Kimmel, Ph.D.
Michael A. Messner, University of Southern California
Michael Shaw, Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Services, Waypoint
Neil Irvin & Pat McGann, Ph.D., Men Can Stop Rape
Paul Kivel
Quentin Walcott & Marlon Walker, CONNECT NYC
Rob Okun, VOICE MALE Magazine
Rus Funk, MensWork
Dr. Stephen Jefferson, UMass, Amherst
Steven Botkin, Ed.D., Men’s Resources International
Sut Jhally, Media Education Foundation
Ted Bunch & Tony Porter, A CALL TO MEN
Ulester Douglas & Sulaiman Nuriddin, Men Stopping Violence
Victor Rivas Rivers, Actor, Author, Spokesperson/National Network to End Domestic Violence & Verizon Community Champion

Please distribute this widely and join MenSpeakforGenderJustice on Facebook.

This week the US Army is holding its 4th annual I. A.M. Strong Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Prevention (SHARP) Summit. I am interested in learning more about the steps the Army is taking to prevent sexual violence. We know that sexual violence is a pervasive problem within the United States military. What I appreciate about the Army approach is that they recognize that culture change is necessary for effective rape prevention.

The Army’s I.A.M. Strong campaign asks soldiers to intervene, act and be motiviated to end sexual violence. In the goals for the summit, the Army seeks to “engag[e] all Soldiers and civilians in preventing sexual assaults before they occur.”

The goal is to eliminate incidents of sexual harassment and assault through a comprehensive program that centers on awareness and prevention, training and education, reporting options, timely responses, victim advocacy and accountability.

Previously CALCASA representatives (including myself) have spoken at this event several times; this year I will be be following it on Twitter (#SHARPSummit11). So far the Secretary of the Army John McHugh and White House Advisor on Violence Against Women Lynn Rosenthal have spoken.

What do you think about this effort to prevent sexual violence? Can an institution such as the military change its culture to eliminate rape?

An article in last Sunday’s New York Times highlighted an apparent contradictions: in communities typically considered progress, people actual opposed measures that improve the environment, such as people in New York’s Park Slope opposing bike lanes in their neighborhood. What I found very interesting was the explanation that “[h]umans hew to the ‘normative’ behaviors of their community “ from Robert Cialdini, , an emeritus professor at Arizona State University who studies environmental behaviors.  New York times’ Elizbeth Rosenthal writes:

Test yourself: When a sign in a hotel bathroom exhorts you to reuse your towel for the sake of the planet, do you nonetheless tend to throw it on the floor to get a new one? (Me: Guilty.)

…Professor Cialdini’s research has found that the best way to get a guest to reuse towels is to inform him that a majority of the previous guests in that room did not switch towels daily. Likewise, in a study to determine how to get people to reduce home energy use, conducted with Wesley Schultz, Professor Cialdini found that people were most likely to comply if told that all the neighbors were doing it — rather than informed that saving energy would save money or was good for the planet.

“People need to be in alignment with their contemporaries,” he said. “It validates them. It becomes something they should do and can do.”

This is very similar to the social norms approach to sexual violence prevention. (see Alan Berkowitz’s articles.) Perhaps providing information on what to do is not as effective as providing information on what peers are doing is more likely to promote change.

People are less likely to change by getting information; they are more likely to change when they believe this is aligned with expected behavior.  At, least, Professor Cialdini believes this regarding environmental action.

Do you think it applies to sexual violence and domestic violence prevention?  I think so.

During the recent PreventConnect web conferences Changing the Public Perceptions about Violence Against Women, National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s Director Karen Baker reviewed the new report American Perceptions of Sexual Violence: A FrameWorks Research Report.

After reading the report, preparing for these web conferences and discussing the findings with hundreds of sexual and domestic violence prevention advocates, I have several observations. First, the work conducted over that last 30 years of people in the sexual and domestric violence movements have made a difference.  The general public knows that rape takes place, that  it is usually not a stranger who rapes, and know not to say that it is the victim’s fault for being abused.

However, my second observation is our messages which may seem completely clear to those of us in the field, often do not have the desired effect.  People know not to say it is the victim’s fault, but then they still think just if she did not _______ (fill in the blank with “wear those clothes, be with those people, etc.). As Jenny Dills tweeted, “Okay, but if we’re saying these msgs for 30 years & public still victim blames, is it time to change message?”

Finally, the recommendations from this study reinforce my commitment to finding community based solutions.  We have to frame the issues of sexual and domestic violence as community issues and not get too sidetracked with individual stories.

I look forward to the next parts of this work that the NSVRC and Frameworks will take to develop messages that can advance our efforts to prevent sexual violence.

Check out the full report here and listen to a recording of the web conference.

The New England Adolescent Research Institute Inc. (NEARI) with support from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) has developed an online course called Engaging Bystanders in Sexual Violence Prevention. It is based on the NSVRC publication of the same name. This course provides the basics for how to encourage friends and family to deter and possibly prevent sexual violence.

Click here to check it out.

On the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Veto Violence web site, they have created several online eLearning courses about basic public health prevention concepts such as the social ecological model and primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. These online courses, called Principles of Prevention, will be very helpful as part of the basic training to introduce people to prevention concepts.

In the podcast below, I interview Jennifer Middlebrooks, Acting Team Lead of the Health Communication and Education Team of the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC’s newly released free online course features interviews with leading experts in the field, dynamic graphics, interactive exercises and compelling storytelling that makes the case for violence prevention.

Jennifer Middlebrooks on the Principles of Prevention

Check out this excellent new edition of the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs‘ newsletter Partners in Social Change.  The topic is how bystanders can be agents of change to prevent sexual violence. This wonderful resources includes articles by Joan Tabachnick (Telling a Story to Inspire action), Eli Crawford (Bystander Interventions: A Commentary on Relationships’ Roles in Ending Sexism & Male Dominance) and more.

Click here to get this resource.

Craig Lefebvre put together a wonderful list of “what ifs” for social marketing for his blog On Social Marketing and Social Justice. I think this list also is appropriate to consider in prevention programs.

didn’t have target audiences – but co-creators

didn’t have distribution systems – but places where people could play

didn’t use focus groups – but designed research to fit the puzzle and people

didn’t assess knowledge and attitudes – but sought insight into people’s motivation and values

didn’t start with analyzing people – but first assumed that it was something in their environment

didn’t create messages and stories – but focused on crafting exchanges

didn’t track program output – but what, how often and from where people saw and heard from us

didn’t aim at target audiences – but served people

didn’t focus on changing behaviors – but offered people new ways to solve problems, meet their needs and reach for their dreams

didn’t focus on evaluation as the end of the process – but sustainability as the start of the next one

Wouldn’t this be a good way to think about prevention?

The National Latino Alliance for the Elimination of Domestic Violence (Alianza) has released a position paper titled Working with Men & Boys to End Domestic Violence. Written by Dr. Julia Perilla, this paper describes the principles with which Alianza approaches working with men to end domestic violence.

Organizations like Alianza have taken the lead in articulating the need to engage men in the domestic violence and sexual violence movement. The paper calls for culturally specific work from an asset based approach

Latino cultures, as do other cultures, contain values, beliefs, and expectations that can be used to justify, excuse, and even encourage domestic violence. At the same time, there are a number of Latino cultural traditions and values that support and celebrate respectful and healthy relationships that need to be emphasized and encouraged and that can be employed to help eliminate domestic violence using an assets-based approach.

I appreciate how Alianza describes the role of prevention and intervention.

Our work with men must be carried out at both the intervention and prevention levels. Thus, at the same time that we work with men who have used violence against their partners and children, we must also engage men who have stopped their violence and want to continue their journey towards non-violence, and with men who have never used violence and want to join the work of eradicating domestic violence from our communities.

Click here to check our this position paper.

The traditional prevention program paradigm treats its audience as the object of the intervention. For example, professionals provide a curriculum to help youth avoid sexual violence and dating violence. However, a transformative prevention program supports youth to become “agents of change”; they are not the “targets” of the intervention but they are the part of the solutiom” to the problem.

Prevention efforts like Men of Strength Clubs, Start Strong programs and STAND & SERVE are just a few examples of prevention programs that adopt this approach. I was pleased to see the recent article, Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities: Combining Theory and Practice in a Community-Level Violence Prevention Curriculum that highlights an afterschool program curriculum that engages youth to take action to prevent violence.

The article highlights a youth curriculum that focused on community change. I find the change model to be instructive (see below): it works with youth, community and adults’ capacity to work with youth.

How does your prevention effort work to empower youth?

Below is the full abstract and details about this article.

Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities: Combining Theory and Practice in a Community-Level Violence Prevention Curriculum.

Zimmerman MA, Stewart SE, Morrel-Samuels S, Franzen S, Reischl TM. Health Promotion Practice 2010; ePublished November 8, 2010.

Click here for the article on the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2010, Sage Publications)

This article describes the development and evaluation of an after-school curriculum designed to prepare adolescents to prevent violence through community change. This curriculum, part of the Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities (YES) program, is guided by empowerment and ecological theories within a positive youth development context. YES is designed to enhance the capacity of adolescents and adults to work together to plan and implement community change projects. The youth curriculum is organized around six themed units: (a) Youth as Leaders, (b) Learning about Our Community, (c) Improving Our Community, (d) Building Intergenerational Partnerships, (e) Planning for Change, and (f) Action and Reflection. The curriculum was developed through an iterative process. Initially, program staff members documented their activities with youth. These outlines were formalized as curriculum sessions. Each session was reviewed by the program and research staff and revised based on underlying theory and practical application. The curriculum process evaluation includes staff and youth feedback. This theoretically based, field-tested curriculum is designed to be easily adapted and implemented in a diverse range of communities.

“That’s somebody’s daughter. That’s somebody’s sister. Do you want somebody treating your sister like that? No? Well, then, keep that in mind.”

This reminder from a father to his son is quoted in a new study published online in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence about how African American families discuss teen dating violence.

While many teen dating violence prevention program emphasize school based curricula, youth leadership and media messaging, families remain an important piece of prevention efforts. I see the social ecological model (below) as a model of different types of activities that should be in a comprehensive prevention effort.  We cannot limit our prevention efforts to individual education or community education campaigns.

The Social Ecological Model

This article provides an interesting qualitative study of how parents address dating violence and promote healthy relationships.  Many parents are protective of their daughters, some parents speak from their experiences of being abused, and other parents promote self esteem as a protective factor to reduce the possibility of dating violence.

How does your prevention efforts support parents to prevent dating violence?

Below is the abstract and link to the article on the journal’s web site.

“Do you Want Somebody Treating Your Sister Like That?”: Qualitative Exploration of How African American Families Discuss and Promote Healthy Teen Dating Relationships.

Akers AY, Yonas M, Burke J, Chang JC. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2010; ePublished October 1, 2010

Click here for a link to the article on the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2010, Sage Publications)

The article discusses a study conducted between December 2007 and March 2008 that involved 19 gender-stratified focus groups with African American parents and adolescents from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to explore the process and content of parent-adolescent communication about sex. Discussions about intimate partner violence (IPV) and healthy relationships emerge inductively as critical topics in these conversations. The authors use a grounded theory approach to content analysis to identify and organize themes related to discussions on these topics. A total of 125 participants from 52 families are recruited for the study. Family history of child sexual abuse often motivates discussions. Mothers are described as the primary parent discussing sexual issues with children. Fathers primarily role model ideal male partnership behavior for sons and daughters. Parents seek to prevent daughters from experiencing sexual abuse or emotional manipulation by partners and focus on instilling a sense of responsibility to and respect for romantic partners in sons. Parents prioritize and express the need for tools to influence their adolescent’s socialization as romantic partners. Mothers and fathers approach this process differently. Family-focused interventions to prevent unhealthy relationships can build on parent’s efforts.

Sexual and domestic violence are community problems that require community-based solutions. But the dominant way to look at sexual and domestic violence is through an individual lens, not a community-wide lens.  For example, researchers examining domestic violence homicides in Michigan found that the media often did not even identify these cases as domestic violence (see April Zeoli’s presentation at the 2010 American Public Health Association Mass media patterns and trends of intimate partner violence reporting )  Most services and systems approach these as individual reports (like a police report) or as an individual client.

As a prevention practitioner, I stress that sexual and domestic violence are community issues. Such violence takes place in a cultural context that perpetuates the violence. And to prevent violence, we have to make shifts on the community and social level.  Public health taught me to think about “population based” solutions that change the environment to address a problem.

While effective collection of forensic evidence and shelters are very important, interventions like these by themselves are insufficient to end sexual and domestic violence. Last week I explored these themes as I piloted a two hour workshop titled Creating a Culture Free of Abuse: Community Approaches to Prevent Family Violence for the Center for Collaborative Response at San Jose State University.  In this workshop I explored the solutions to family violence that require community responses.

I highlighted several examples of community based prevention efforts: working with Transforming Communities work with faith communities, engaging coaches to work athletes on their teams to prevent violence through the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s Coaching Boys into Men campaign, community organizing strategies in Dorchester, MA by Close to Home, engaging men with the A CALL TO MEN Milwaukee Healthy Manhood Project, and resources for everyday people to end domestic violence by Creative Interventions.

Click here for a handout from the presentation.

In the next few months, check out this blog where we will feature podcasts highlighting these community prevention efforts and more about efforts to put the community at the center of prevention.

Image from poster from www.globaltvedmonton.com

In Edmonton, Canada, a coalition of organizations called Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton has launched a new rape prevention campaign targeting potential perpetrators. Their website describes the thinking behind this campaign:

Typically, sexual assault awareness campaigns target potential victims by urging women to restrict their behavior. Research is telling us that targeting the behavior of victims is not only ineffective, but also contributes to how much they blame themselves after the assault. That’s why our campaign is targeting potential offenders – they are the ones responsible for the assault and responsible for stopping it. By addressing alcohol-facilitated sexual assault without victim-blaming, we intend to mark Edmonton on the map as a model for other cities.

What you you think about this campaign?

(Thanks to Feministing for alerting me to this campaign.)

PreventConnect

In this podcast, Prevent Connect‘s David Lee interviews Marjorie Gilberg from Break the Cycle and Sue Thomas from Hazelden Foundation. They discuss “Respect WORKS!,” the new four-part comprehensive model for teen dating violence prevention.

When I look at the current crop of highly regarded prevention initiatives, one theme sticks out: they are comprehensive models that include multiple actions to reach the same goal. For example, Start Strong includes youth education, engaging teen influencers, communication strategies and policy work. Men Can Stop Rape‘s work included MOST Clubs, their media messages such as “My strength is not for hurting,” and community action. Green Dot emphasizes persuavie speechs, bystander training and media elements.

Now, there is another example from Hazelden and Break the Cycle. Respect WORKS! has 4 elements:

• Teen vating Violence policies with Model School Policy Toolkit
• Educate youth with the curriculum Safe Dates
• Reinforce the learning with the DVD [Ending Violence]
• Activate youth leadership with Speak. Act. Change.

Respect WORKS!

Program cover for ATSA Conference 2010

In October, CALCASA participated in the 2010 Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. This conference was designed for treatment providers who work with sex offenders and abusers. The conference featured many workshops for victim advocates, law enforcement, and other public safety officials who are also highly involved in sex offender management and sexual abuse prevention and searching for the newest evidence-based systems to deal with this growing and complex criminal population.

Plenary speakers presented on a variety of issues throughout the conference:

Mary P. Koss, Ph.D. discussed “Individualizing Justice for Sexual Assault” which focused on individualized redress and rehabilitation for juvenile and adult sexual assault. Also, the impact on perpetrators/responsible parties and survivor/victims were reviewed.

Raymond Knight, Ph.D. gave an outstanding presentation on primary prevention titled “Transforming Prevention and Intervention: What Guidance Does Etiological Research on Rape Provide?” His presentation discussed how “research on the prevention of aggression and impulsivity has suggested that prevention programs yield superior outcomes when they target risk factors that are causative rather than simply correlative.”

Larry Magid, Ed.D., co-director of ConnectSafely.org, and internet safety advocate focused on “Internet Safety 3.0: Keeping Youth Safe on the Living Internet” where he focused on the real risks of the ever-evolving internet that now includes “cyber bullying, sexting and peer harassment — sexual and otherwise.”

The conference’s closing speakers was CALCASA’s former executive director, Suzanne Brown-McBride, who now serves as Deputy Director of the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments. She presented on “Practical Alchemy and the Transformation of the Public Safety Agenda” and concentrated on “practical tools and approaches that advocates for public safety can utilize to sustain through the crisis of the short-term and lay the foundation for long-term change.”

Other highlights from the conference included a new public policy survey from the Center for Sex Offender Management that resulted in a surprising number of contradictions among the general public’s concerns regarding sex offender managemente.

ATSA can provide your community with information on how to better manage your sex offender population. Visit their site for more information.

I was among the 12,000 people attending the 138th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association. This year’s theme was “Social Justice: A Public Health Imperative.” I had the chance to learn about new research, practices and lessons learned about sexual violence prevention, among many other topics.

To open the conference I was inspired listening to Cornel West.  Speaking  rapid-fire with references to everything from Socrates to W.E.B. DeBois to Bootsy Collins, he highlighted the crucial role of social justice to build a vibrant democracy. Check out his passionate address below.

As I wrote in a previous blog,  social justice is a key element of creating change. Social justice drives our work to end sexual and domestic violence. We need to use the tools of science, research, evaluation and programming; but the fundamental goal is to create social change.

Among my highlights of the conferences were Hanrie Han speaking about community organizing, Susan Sorenson on gender disparities in injury and violence, Lori Post on “implicit collusion” (regarding media coverage of domestic violence deaths), and Mariana Chilton on the violence behind hunger.

David Lee with poster about PreventConnect at the 2010 APHA Annual Meeting

I also shared information about PreventConnect in a poster session. Check out my poster PreventConnect: An Online Community of Practice to Advance Primary Prevention of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence.

Photo by Michele Massetani, 2008, http://bit.ly/9Y41zk

In my work to prevent sexual and domestic violence, I see links to many other related topics such as child maltreatment, sexual harassment and bullying, Yet, often there are different people engaged in each of these types of work, different funders, discrete groups of researchers and separate conferences to address these issues. We are trapped in out silos.

I agree with my colleagues at the Prevention Institute who say that “a good solution often solves multiple problems.”  In the recent issue of Journal of Women’s Health, Vivolo and her colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for linking different issues to build effective sexual violence prevention efforts.

In the article Developing Sexual Violence Prevention Strategies by Bridging Spheres of Public Health, the authors examine risk factors that are common with perpetration of sexual violence and other issues. For example they stated:

Early initiation of sexual intercourse is an example of a developmental experience that is a risk factor for both SV perpetration and negative sexual health outcomes, such as unintended pregnancy and HIV/STD transmission.

Of course, risk factors are not necessarily the same as causes of a problem.  I would not want to suggest that early initiation of sexual intercourse is a cause of sexual violence perpetration. Nonetheless, we can consider the links with other health issues.

I appreciate their call to break down the silos and coordinate prevention efforts:

…although the evidence base for SV prevention is still growing, the SV field stands to benefit from the knowledge of our neighbors in public health, spefically HIV/STD and teen pregnancy prevention. Current programs that are aimed at reducing sexual risk behaviors and increasing protective factors against HIV/STD and pregnancy in high school populations could be modified to include messages that simultaneously target SV perpetration. The core components of effective SV prevention programs could be integrated into effective prevention strategies from other health areas.

Back to a good solution solving multiple problems. I want to go beyond looking at risk factors. If we focus on common protective factors we can link our efforts to build healthy lives and communities.

Below is the full abstract and link to the article on the journal’s web site:

Developing Sexual Violence Prevention Strategies by Bridging Spheres of Public Health.

Vivolo AM, Holland KM, Teten AL, Holt MK. Journal of Women’s Health, Volume 19, No. 10, 2010

Click here for a link to this article.

(Copyright © 2010, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

Abstract Sexual violence (SV) is a significant public health problem with multiple negative physical and emotional sequelae for both victims and perpetrators. Despite substantial research and program activity over the past 20 years, there are few programs with demonstrated effectiveness in preventing SV. As a result, the field may benefit from considering effective approaches used with other risk behaviors that share risk factors with SV. The Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has taken several steps to identify and understand the breadth of risk factors for sexual violence and to delineate the implications of these factors in the development of effective prevention strategies. This report from CDC will highlight several risk factors that, although not traditionally included in SV prevention efforts, may be important areas on which to focus and may ultimately prevent youth from embarking on trajectories resulting in SV perpetration.

Rachel Olive of the Nebraska Domestic Violence Sexual Assault Coalition

PreventConnect.org

In this podcast, PreventConnect‘s David Lee interviews Rachel Olive, the Prevention Coordinator at the Nebraska Domestic Violence Sexual Assault Coalition. They discussed the upcoming Nebraska Prevention Summit that will be held on Nov. 18, 2010 in Lincoln, Nebraska. This Summit will bring together a diverse group of people committed to the prevention of sexual violence and domestic violence. The Summit will advance prevention efforts for the Rape Prevention & Education and DELTA PREP programs in Nebraska.

Click here to listen to the podcast and learn about this “giant think tank” on sexual violence and domestic violence prevention in Nebraska.

This event is similar to the Minnesota Summit to Prevent Sexual Violence held in 2009.

I look forward to learning about how this Summit will help advance prevention in Nebraska.

Rachel Olive on Nebraska’s Prevention Summit

Last week I had the opportunity to provide trainings on Emerging Trends in Sexual Violence Prevention in New Mexico. The rooms were full in Las Cruces and Albuquerque as I explored how prevention is the work to change the conditions that cause sexual violence. Here are some of the participants saying “prevent sexual violence in New Mexico.”

Click here for a copy of the handouts for these sessions. These trainings were the second in a series of trainings to implement Building Capacity for Preventing Sexual Violence in New Mexico: A Three-Year Strategic Plan.

I was quite inspired by the members of the audience sharing their efforts to prevent sexual violence. One women told us about how she attended the Bioneers Conference representing a rape crisis center.  This conference is described as “a leading-edge forum & environmental conference–social and scientific innovators focus on solutions inspired by nature & human ingenuity.”  People kept coming up to her asking why is someone from a rape crisis center at this environmental conference. She replied that she sees rape as an environmental problem.  I completely agree – sexual violence prevention requires a solutions that changes the rape culture environment. (And my son recently performed at the opening of the 2010 Bioneers Conference dancing with Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company.)

Another participant shared how when she heard me speak in New Mexico a few years ago about using the social ecological model, she was inspired to change how her agency approached prevention to ensure they were doing work on the individual, relationship, community and societal level.  How inspiring to to hear that I helped inspire action.

Thanks to my colleagues at the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, New Mexico Department of Health and University of New Mexico Prevention Research Center for arranging such wonderful trainings.

Here is a great example of an action to create change: tomorrow’s SPARK Summit.

SPARK – Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge – is a day to speak out, push back on the sexualization of girls, and have fun while igniting a movement for girls’ rights to healthy sexuality. SPARK Summit will jumpstart a movement for change.

SPARK Summit will launch an intergenerational movement to support and stand with girls. In response to the American Psychological Association’s Task Force Report on Sexualization of Girls, the most downloaded documented in the history of the APA’s website, the SPARK Summit will engage girls to be part of the solution rather than to protect them from the problem, to give them the tools they need to become activists, organizers, researchers, policy influencers, and media makers, pushing back against the increasingly sexualized images of girlhood in the media and creating room for whole girls. The Summit will jumpstart the community building that will continue on- and off-line that will challenge the belief that “it’s just the way things are” and demonstrate what the alternatives can be.

There are going to be many great speakers. I will be following the tweets live #SparkSummit.

Available from www.nearipress.org

With so many developments in sexual violence prevention, we have not had a collection that summarized many different approaches until now. Portland State University professor Keith Kaufman has edited a new 500+ page book titled “The Prevention of Sexual Violence: A Practitioners Sourcebook” published by Neari Press. This sourcebook goes on sale this week. Below is my interview with the editor Keith Kaufman.

Self Promotion Alert: This book includes a chapter written by myself and CALCASA’s Chad Sniffen about the national online project PreventConnect.

Other authors who have contributed to this sourcebook include Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Cordelia Anderson, Deborah Callins of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, Deborah Donavan Rice of Stop It Now, John Foubert,  Corinne Graffunder, James Mercy and Karen Lang of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Christine Gidycz, Patrick McGann of Men Can Stop Rape, Paul Schewe, and Joan Tabachnick (author of Engaging Bystanders in Sexual Violence Prevention.)

Check out this interview with Keith Kaufman, editor of “The Prevention of Sexual Violence: A Practitioners Handbook,” for more information. Once I get my hands on the book, I will write a more detailed impression of it.

This book will be available at the CALCASA library. All proceeds from the book will go to support prevention work of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

What creates the changes necessary to prevent sexual violence and dating violence?  While many of our educational programs focus on increasing knowledge about rape and violence, I am skeptical that increasing knowledge alone will create change.

The theory behind education is something like this: change people’s knowledge that will shift their attitudes; which will in turn shift their beliefs; and will then have an affect on their behavior. But this does not seem to be the best way to create change.

Take healthy eating for an example. Most of use now that we should eat healthy; we have attitudes that eating healthy is good for us; we even believe that eating healthy is good for us. But do we actually eat healthily?  By trying to create change on an individual basis, we do not develop the best strategies for actual behavior change.

I think the more important influences are more community-level:  the social expectations, what is modeled behavior, what is reinforced by media messages what is considered to be socially desirable influence behavior more than knowledge,

Yet, I see a lot of research on individual risks for sexual abuse and dating violence. Where is the research on community factors?

So I was excited to read the new article published in the American Journal of Public Health, Neighborhood Predictors of Dating Violence Victimization and Perpetration in Young Adulthood: A Multilevel Study. In this paper, the authors examined neighborhood factors that are associated with dating violence. They considered “collective efficacy” – a concept capturing “community cohesiveness and residents’ willingness to intervene for the common good; “ Here is how they measured it:

collective efficacy was a summary scale of social cohesion and informal social control. The social cohesion scale was a sum of 5 items assessing community residents’ willingness to help and trust each other and to get along and whether they shared the same values and perceived the community as close-knit. Informal social control assessed the likelihood of neighbors intervening if children were skipping school, hanging out on a street corner, or spray-painting graffiti.

The findings of this study found different affects for collective efficacy on victimization and perpetration, as well as differences based on gender (see note below.) Also, the findings demonstrated differences based on the level of poverty. In conclusion, the researchers suggest that teen dating violence can be addressed with community-level comprehensive prevention efforts.
As se are developing, implementing, evaluating and researching prevention efforts, let’s use concepts such as those explored in this study to develop community-level prevention that goes beyond individual knowledge.

Note: This study indicated that females perpetuate more dating violence than males. The measure of dating violence used were items selected from the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale. While this scale is commonly used in research, there are many concerns (see the VAWnet paper about concerns about the Conflict Tactics Scale.) Recently Elizabeth Reed and colleagues wrote about problem of removing the gender from gender based violence. While these concerns are important, I also think the exploration of neighborhood factors important for understanding how to prevent dating violence.

Below is the full citation and link to the article.

Neighborhood Predictors of Dating Violence Victimization and Perpetration in Young Adulthood: A Multilevel Study

Sonia Jain, DrPH, Stephen L. Buka, ScD, S. V. Subramanian, PhD, and Beth E. Molnar, ScD, American Journal of Public Health. 2010; 100:1737–1744.

Click here for a link to the article on the journal’s web site.

Objectives. We examined whether social processes of neighborhoods, such as collective ef?cacy, during individual’s adolescent years affect the likelihood of being involved in physical dating violence during young adulthood.

Methods. Using longitudinal data on 633 urban youths aged 13 to 19 years at baseline and data from their neighborhoods (collected by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods), we ran multilevel linear regression models separately by gender to assess the association between collective ef?cacy and physical dating violence victimization and perpetration, controlling for individual covariates, neighborhood poverty, and perceived neighborhood violence.

Results. Females were signi?cantly more likely than were males to be perpetrators of dating violence during young adulthood (38% vs 19%). Multilevel analyses revealed some variation in dating violence at the neighborhood level, partly accounted for by collective ef?cacy. Collective ef?cacy was predictive of victimization for males but not females after control for confounders; it was marginally associated with perpetration (P = .07). The effects of collective ef?cacy varied by neighborhood poverty. Finally, a signi?cant proportion (intraclass correlation = 14%–21%) of the neighborhood-level variation in male perpetration remained unexplained after modeling.

Conclusions. Community-level strategies may be useful in preventing dating violence.

In this podcast, psychologist Dr. Dave Walsh talks about the implications of brain development, adolescence and emerging technology for developing sexual abuse prevention efforts. This was recorded at a meeting of the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation held in September 2010.

In a wonderful blog by Laura Fidler for the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, she asks what is your vision for a nation free of sexual violence.  Above are some of the responses from her workshop conducted at the National Sexual Assault Conference in Hoillywood in September.

My vision is a world full of life-affirming art. What is your vision?

In my experiences as a prevention educator, I found that despite my best efforts, a one-time presentation (or even multi-session series) is unlikely to have impact without regular reinforcement from the providers with day-to-day contact in that setting. At best my messages are isolated and not reinforced; at worst the message are contradicted (such as the teacher acting abusively to students during a presentation on building healthy relationships.)

The Spectrum of Prevention is a great tool to help build comprehensive prevention efforts. The third level is “Training Providers.”  In many ways, training providers may create more change in an environment than doing individual training sessions.

Now we have an additional resource with the recently released guide from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Training Professionals in the Primary Prevention of Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence: A Planning Guide.I especially like the Tip Sheets and worksheets that suggest how to tailor to specific audiences, integrate adult learning principles,  and design trainings.

What do you think about this guide?

What makes an organization have the capacity to conduct effective prevention programs? So much of our training focuses on the “how” to do prevention. We teach about definitions of prevention; we share “best practices” and highlight what the “evidence” tells us.

However, actually making change requires much more than that. Implementing effective prevention requires setting up systems within our organizations and shifting the culture of how we approach our work. For example, a prevention educator may fully understand a new innovative prevention practice. But in order to get the support to succeed, that person needs the organization to support the work.

In the last I have attended two web conferences on building capacity for prevention where Jeanne Bell, the CEO of Compass Point, looked at her experiences in leadership development and capacity building in other fields, and lead a discussion about strategies to increase the individual, organizational and institutional capacity of rape crisis centers to conduct effective prevention efforts.

Click here for slides from her presentation on September 27, 2010 conducted for California’s Rape Crisis Centers. This web conference was supported with funding from the California Department of Public Health, Safe and Active Communities Branch (formerly the EPIC Branch) and the Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant.

Click here for a recording of this web conference.

Jeanne Bell, MNA is CEO of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services —one of the country’s leading providers of training and consulting services to community-based organizations. She is the co-author of Financial Leadership for Nonprofit Executives: Guiding Your Organization to Long Term Success (Wilder). In addition to frequent speaking and consulting on nonprofit strategy and finance, Jeanne has conducted a series of research projects on nonprofit executive leadership, including Daring to Lead 2006: A National Study of Nonprofit Executive Leadership and Securing the Safety Net: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Leadership in California. Jeanne is Chair of the board of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management and a board member with the Nonprofits’ Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC) and with Intersection for the Arts. She serves on the advisory board of The Nonprofit Quarterly.

Registration is now open for the next PreventConnect web conference My Business: Countering Secrecy and Privacy Around Violence Through Norms Change. These sessions are the final topic of this year’s web conferences on changing norms to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence.

The web conference will take place on September 28, 2010 at 11:00am Pacific Time (2:00 Eastern Time) and will be repeated on September 29, 2010.

Invited guests include Dorothy Edwards, author of the well respected Green Dot Violence Prevention Strategy, and Vanessa Timmons, co-author of the August 2010 article in the American Journal of Public Health “You Don’t Go Tell White People Nothing”: African American Women’s Perspectives on the Influence of Violence ( IPV) and Race on Depression and Depression Care. The session will be led by Prevention Institute’s Annie Lyles and Christina Chang.

Click here to register and learn more about this web conference.  Sign up now before the session is full.

CALCASA's David Lee and staff from the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault at the prevention training held in September 2010.

This week I had the opportunity to go the beautiful Maine to work with my colleagues at the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault to provide a training on “Effective Community Change: New Trends in Sexual Violence Prevention.” The training was held at a green certified Maple Hill Farm Conference Center where we looked out at a working windmill and solar panels on the roof generated electricity to heat the water.

Even more important, I met almost 30 people working in sexual violence prevention throughout Maine.  I learned about prevention activities in Maine, their commitment to engage youth and the work to align sexual violence prevention with Maine’s educational standards established in the Maine Learning Results.

During the training, we examined how prevention programs promote the social change necessary to build a world with sexual assault; we explored how people actual change their behavior (which required much more than knowledge); and we asked key questions to help develop comprehensive prevention programs.

Click here to see the handouts from the training.

Preventing intimate partner and sexual violence against women: Taking action and generating evidence, the excellent new report from the World Health Organization,  identifies the value of primary prevention strategies:

The primary prevention of intimate partner and sexual violence is likely to save lives and money – investment to stop intimate partner and sexual violence before they occur is crucial as this will protect and promote the well-being and development of individuals, families, communities and societies.

The definition of the public health approach used in this report examines many perspectives on prevention including gender-based, human rights and criminal justice approaches.

While the report shows a limited number of “evidence-based” prevention strategies (none are identified to prevent sexual violence), by highlighting promising efforts and describing approaches to measure prevention efforts, this report is a valuable tool to help point the way to build the prevention knowledge in the coming years.

Click here to get a copy of this report.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: What is Healthy Sexuality and What Does It Have to do with Sexual Violence Prevention?

Presenters:

• Brad Perry, Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance
• Bethany Pombar, Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
• Ashley Maier, Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force

Description: This panel described a healthy sexuality framework, and illustrate how tools and theories from the field of sexual health promotion can augment primary sexual violence prevention efforts. Staff from state-level sexual violence organizations in Vermont, Oregon, and Virginia will describe and discuss healthy sexuality initiatives in their respective states, from state-level policies to local education projects.

Materials:

• Slides from Bethany Pombar, Vermont [PDF]
• Slides from Ashley Maier, Oregon [PDF]
• Moving Upstream, Virginia’s Primary Prevention Newsletter, Issue 4-1 on Healthy Sexuality

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: STAND & SERVE…Building a World We Want to Live In

Presenters:

• Jennifer Rauhouse and Hannah Larson, Peer Solutions
• Cesar Cristerna, Logan Tompkins, Shalante Perry, Chris Casarreal and Alexia Villalobos, STAND & SERVE Club Members, Middle School and High School Students

Description: Peer Solutions offers STAND & SERVE (S&S), a primary prevention initiative designed to cultivate safety, equality and respect as norms as a means to preventing sexual violence and the subsequent negative affects before they occur. This interactive and fun workshop was facilitated by S&S Middle and High School Students and Peer Solutions staff. We heard from Carol Hensell about how the Arizona Department of Health supports our work. We shared real examples of the steps needed to develop, implement and sustain efforts with an emphasis on community mobilization and relationship building to enhance recruitment and retention. We shared lessons learned from each other about what is working in our communities. We believe it takes everyone to build a world we want to live in. This is a world free from sexual violence; this is a world where safety, equality and respect are norms. We are all Peers, We are all the Solution.

Materials:

• Slides [PDF]
• STAND & SERVE Super Hero Exercise [Word Document]
• STAND & SERVE Memo [PDF]

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Introducing Vietnamese Community Organizing Work to Prevent Domestic and Sexual Violence Using Community Asset-Based and Close to Home’s model.

Presenters:

Van Lan Truong, Close to Home

Description:
This highly interactive workshop focused on how to engage communities—youth, adults and organizations — in domestic and sexual violence prevention by using participatory assessment as a starting place. It included an examination of Close to Home?s program model, participatory activities to illustrate our process, and community member-created multimedia products. Participants left with practical skills to bring back to their practices.  The workshop was tailored to be relevant to people from a variety of backgrounds including those involved in violence prevention work, and those interested in learning about community engagement.

Materials:

• Read the CALCASA blog about this workshop

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Green Dot Across Kentucky: A Model of Statewide Collaboration

Presenters:

• Dorothy J. Edwards, Green Dot etc., Inc
• Eileen Recktenwald, Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs
• Anne Coker, Professor and Endowed Chair in the Center for Research on Violence Against Women in the Departments of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and Obstetrics and Gynecology in the College of Medicine, University of Kentucky
• Natalie Kelly, Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services

Description:

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.“ ?Henry Ford.

The Kentucky Green Dot Project is a shining example of how Henry Ford?s words can come to fruition!  Across Kentucky we are attempting to create a “world we want to live (and work) in.”  We would like to share our experience that can have direct bene?t to states around the country embarking on similar missions. It is common knowledge that collaboration is a preferable and effective mode of operation for our work.  But, often such efforts are wrought with controversy, politics and inef?ciency.  This session will highlight a truly symbiotic relationship between the partners of the Green Dot Project in 26 high schools across Kentucky and how coalition building has fostered success.  Strategies which were employed to create this partnership will be discussed, including the importance of fundamental relationship building, clear communications, goal setting, shared vision, ?exibility, and other key components.

Materials: The presenters did not provide materials.

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Green Dot: A Comprehensive Approach to Violence Prevention

Presenters:

• Dorothy Edwards, Green Dot etc., Inc.

Description: This workshop provided an introduction to a comprehensive model of violence prevention that emphasizes the role of bystanders in addressing power-based personal violence (sexual assault, dating violence, stalking). Informed by social change theory, the Green Dot model targets all community members as potential bystanders, and seeks to engage them, through awareness, education and skills practice in proactive behaviors that establish intolerance of violence as the norm, as well as reactive interventions in high-risk situations – resulting in the ultimate reduction of violence.

Materials: Presenter did not provide materials.

• Check out this CALCASA interview about Green Dot

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Transforming Communities to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation

Presenter: Annie Lyles, Prevention Institute

Description: Preventing child sexual abuse will require shifting the focus from individuals to environments and from fear to wellness. With support from Ms Foundation, Prevention Institute convened local and national leaders to identify an approach, framework and strategies that could be used to support this shift, cultivate investment in promising primary prevention strategies and foster continued dialogue to maximize change in communities. This session included lessons learned from the consensus process and ways to counter speci?c norms prevalent in the US that contribute to child sexual abuse. These lessons and potential strategies were presented through a primary prevention approach tailored to the skills of practitioners and advocates and a focus on multi-sectoral collaborations. The session also highlighted the importance of forming new partnerships and engaging local leaders to formulate a comprehensive strategy that will transform their community.

Materials:

• Slides [PDF]
• Transforming Communities to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation: A Primary Prevention Approach [Link to download]

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Participatory Assessment: Mobilizing Communities to Prevent DV & SA (Close to Home)

Presenters:

• Allison Berry, REACH Beyond Domestic Violence
• Van Lan Tuong, Close to Home

Description:This highly interactive workshop focused on how to engage communities—including youth,  adults and organizations—in domestic and sexual violence prevention by using participatory assessment as a starting place. It included an examination of Close to Home?s program model, participatory activities to illustrate our process, and community member-created multimedia products. Participants left with practical skills to bring back to their practices. Close to Home believes that violence prevention is the responsibility of every community member. The workshop was tailored to be relevant to people from a variety of backgrounds including those involved in violence prevention work, and those interested in learning about community engagement. Close to Home is one of a handful of organizations worldwide that is applying principles of community organizing to domestic violence prevention work and we are excited to share our unique, grassroots perspective on moving from dialogue to action.

Materials:

• Hear Close to Home’s Aimee Thompson on a PreventConnect web conference describing their work

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: From Research to Practice: Designing Community Specific Prevention Programs

Presenter:

• Laura Fidler, New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault

Description:  This workshop will discuss the participatory approach used to develop community-specific primary prevention programs as part of Project Envision, a multi-year community mobilization pilot in New York City. Participants will learn how three community coalitions designed programs that reflect needs assessment findings, are rooted in the principles of primary prevention, and that promote sustainable changes to the social norms which contribute to sexual violence.

Materials:

• Slides [PDF]
• Laura Fidler’s blog about the conference including collective vision for the work
• Listen to the PreventConnect Interview about Project Envision

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Beyond the Fourth Wall: Using Audience Interaction in Sexual Violence Prevention

Presenters:

• Ben Murie and Amber Kelly, Catharsis Productions
  

Description: Using examples from “Sex Signals, ” a two-person, 90-minute live theatrical presentation and facilitation that uses a unique combination of humor, improvisation, and theatre to explore dating, sex, and consent, as well as bystander behavior and moral responsibility, this workshop will illustrate how utilizing your audience can be part of a comprehensive sexual violence prevention effort. The session will also provide further insight for prevention experts on strengthening their skills through unconventional methods, proving there is often a method to what appears to be madness.

Materials:

• Handouts [PDF]

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Working toward a World Free of Sexual Violence: Virginia’s Primary Prevention Guidelines

Presenters: Brad Perry and Kristi Van Audenhove, Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance

Description: The focus of this workshop will be the development, content, and application of Virginia?s Primary Prevention Guidelines. This publication is an innovative resource crucial to building the capacity of communities to plan, implement, and evaluate effective prevention initiatives. It provides common conceptual ground for prevention professionals, and helps translate research and promising practices into digestible, concrete points (incl. case studies) primed for practical application. It also de?nes basic prevention terminology while also pushing the ?eld to consider promotion-oriented goals, such as “healthy sexuality”. Finally, detailed appendices provide deeper context through the inclusion of a glossary, a list of “Priority Risk & Protective Factors,” and a comprehensive assessment tool.

Materials:

• Handout [PDF]
• VSDVAA’s Guidelines for the Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence & Intimate Partner Violence
• PreventConnect Interview with Brad Perry about Virginia Primary Prevention Guidelines

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

During the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, which took place in Hollywood Sept. 1-3, 2010there were more than 80 workshops. The largest track was the Prevention Track sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Workshop Title: Using Freire’s Work to Develop Social Justice Centered Prevention Efforts

Presenters: Kelly Parsley, Carroll College

Description: Most behavior change theories depict a subject-action-consequence model. For example, if I don?t wear my seat belt, I may have negative consequences (horrible injuries); therefore, I?ll wear my seat belt. The world of sexual violence, however, exists outside this pattern. Those who perpetrate often have few or no negative consequences for their actions, and, indeed, there is often much to be gained (e.g., peer approval, dominance). If perpetrators regularly receive positive consequences for their violent behavior, then what theory might work to prevent this crime? One model that can be effective for primary prevention of sexual violence is Paulo Freire?s Theory of Freeing. His model liberates people from biases, allowing them to choose different actions. By freeing potential perpetrators from peer pressure and a world that condones criminal behavior, we free them from oppression that suggests violence and dominance is the only way to be “a real man.”

Materials:

• Slides [PDF]

To view a complete list of workshops, speakers and information related to the 2010 National Sexual Assault Conference, click here.

PreventConnect.org

Registration has opened for the next PreventConnect web conference titled Under Control: Countering the Value Placed on Power and Control Through Norms Change.

Countering norms that reinforce power and control over others is an opportunity to prevent violence in a lasting, comprehensive way. This web conference highlights specific strategies and efforts that seek to change norms related to gendered violence. Different norms will be examined with regard to their historical context, distinct challenges, and opportunities for collaborative work.

The web conference will be hosted by PreventConnect’s David Lee and lead by Annie Lyles and Christine Chang of the Prevention Institute.  Invited guests include Anna Sharratt, Prevention, Education & Outreach Coordinator, Our VOICE, Inc. and Shannon Breitzman, M.A., Director, Injury, Suicide and Violence Prevention Unit, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

This web conference is part of a series on countering norms that contribute to sexual violence and domestic violence.

This web conference will be held on Thursday, August 26, 2010 and repeated on Wednesday, September 8, 2010. This ninety-minute session will start at 11 AM Pacific DST on August 26, and will be repeated at 11 AM Pacific DST on September 8.

Click here to register for this web conference before it is full.

At the Start Strong Annual Meeting in July 2010, the 11 sites funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Blue Shield of California met to learn from each other. Each site brought teen leaders who spent the meeting sharing with each other and developing a PSA, learning to tweet and writing OpEd pieces. This teen dating violence initiative is one of the most exciting new developments in teen dating violence prevention as each site has developed a campaign that integrates education for 11-14 year olds, the engagement of teen influencers (including parents and older teens), communications campaigns and policy development.

Each site has developed its own effort.  Here are some examples: Peace Over Violence in Los Angeles holds its annual Denim Day; Start Strong Idaho has used the Twilight movies to anchor its prevention efforts; Start Strong Boston recently held a Break Up Summit ; Start Strong Rhode Island is developing a teen dating violence video game; Start Strong Bridgeport rated recent films and videos on how they address relationships, and Start Strong Oakland has “I Am Jane” campaign.

I left this meeting excited about the creativity of each of these sites to integrate youth leadership with education, marketing and policy.  While these programs use either SAFE DATES or the 4^th R educational curricula, what separates Start Strong prevention efforts from most other prevention efforts is the comprehensive mix of activities.

Teen dating violence and sexual violence prevention is more than changing people’s knowledge, it is about changing our culture.  It is clearer to me more than ever that changing culture takes more than classroom presentations; it will also need to include poetry slams, youth-led gatherings and creative use of media to advance change.

Come back here for blogs with more details about these Start Strong programs.

Youth Radio, a fabulous program based in Oakland, California (also Los Angeles, Washington DC and Atlanta), created this video from the youth who attended the July Violence Against Women and Teen Dating Violence Prevention Forum held in Sacramento.

Youth Radio’s BOM teen dating violence prevention program uses media to engage youth in a discussion about dating. “Dial Down Your Drama” is a key element of this program that values youth voices being in the forefront.

What other examples do you know where youth have a meaningful voice in prevention efforts?

I was very excited when I read this in the article recently published in Family Community Health titled A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial of an Interpersonal Violence Prevention Program With a Mexican American Community.

If a community’s challenges are viewed without consideration of the historical context of the impact of oppression, discrimination, and intergenerational trauma, they may be misunderstood and therefore be addressed in ways that perpetrate the problems rather than produce lasting change.

I had met the lead author Patricia Kelly several years ago at an American Public Health Association conference where she impressed me with her community centered approaches to violence prevention. She later joined a PreventConnect web conference on measuring prevention.

As I read this article about a Community-Based Participatory Research project in South Texas, I was pleased to see how the program was developed.  Instead of having the researchers select a curriculum to evaluation in a selected community, CBPR is a process in which the researchers work with the community members to design, implement and evaluate the program.

After careful consideration the community members decided to implement El Joven Noble, a curriculum developed in California by Jerry Tello (who was recently a guest on a PreventConnect web conference) and was adapted to address the community in South Texas

This process of having community members play an active role with researchers is a model that sexual violence and domestic violence prevention programs should consider. (In New York City, Project ENVISION is using CBPR approaches.) By having this active community engagement, the community member were able to shape a culturally relevant program with community support that demonstrated improvements in nonviolent self-efficacy and endorsement of program values.

As the authors conclude:

CBPR provides a methodology to engage groups and communities in the design, implemenataion, and evaluation of their own prevention programs. It is well suited for the inlcuison of community values, cultural heritate and hostrorical perspective into both the research process and the product. CBPR also emphasizes the empowerment of inidivudals and communities through the research process.

Below is the full abstraction and citation of this article:

A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial of an Interpersonal Violence Prevention Program With a Mexican American Community.

Kelly PJ, Lesser J, Cheng AL, Oscos-Sanchez M, Martinez E, Pineda D, Mancha J. Family and Cmomunity Health 2010; 33(3): 207-215.

Click here for a link to the article abstract on the journal’s web site

(Copyright © 2010, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

Using methods of community-based participatory research, a prospective randomized controlled trial of a violence prevention program based on Latino cultural values was implemented with elementary school children in a Mexican American community. Community members participated in intervention program selection, implementation, and data collection. High-risk students who participated in the program had greater nonviolent self-efficacy and demonstrated greater endorsement of program values than did high-risk students in the control group. This collaborative partnership was able to combine community-based participatory research with a rigorous study design and provide sustained benefit to community partners.

Chad Sniffen speaking at the Ending Violence Against Women and Teen Dating Violence Forum

Almost 200 people attended the California Department of Public Health’s “Ending Violence Against Women and Teen Dating Violence: A forum for Primary Prevention Advocates” held in Sacramento on July 13-14, 2010.  This fifth annual gathering focused on teen dating violence.

I gave a workshop on “Emerging Themes in Sexual Violence and Domestic Violence Prevention”, and CALCASA’s Chad Sniffen co-facilitated a panel titled “Building Intergenerational Partnerships for Preventing Teen Dating Violence.”

Other speakers included an opening keynote by Jackson Katz calling for greater engagement of men to address men’s violence against women; a session by Elizabeth Reed on “Losing the Gender in Gender-Based Violence” and Clea McNeely, author of The Teen Years Explained; A Guide to Healthy Adolescent Development discussing adolescent development.

CALCASA’s PreventConnect Project recorded many of sessions and will soon release them as podcasts.

I’ve been pondering my Utopian world. Most of my requests are petty: more Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt stores, a private jet, a 24-hour yoga studio and an on-call masseuse. I don’t think that this was what CALCASA had in mind when it picked the theme “building the world we want to live in” for its National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC).

Let me try again. (I’m not that shallow, but I’d humbly take those luxuries if offered.) I want to live in a world where the following iPhone applications don’t exist: I’m Being Assaulted, xOffender and, my favorite, Are You Safe? According to the “Safe-o-Meter” on the Are you Safe application, I’m not safe right now. I’m at risk of motor vehicle theft, robbery, property crime, sexual offense, theft, burglary, assault and murder. I understand that this application has major flaws, but my point is that I want to live in a world where it’s not even necessary to create this application.

How I do I build that world? Dr. Dorothy Edwards addresses some of these building steps with her Green Dot model. She’ll be at NSAC talking about a comprehensive approach to violence prevention. Green Dot is a violence prevention initiative that promotes “any behavior, choice, word or attitude that counters or displaces a red-dot of violence — by promoting safety for everyone and communicating utter intolerance for sexual violence, interpersonal violence, stalking and child abuse.”

Dr. Edwards says that the building steps start with these tasks:

1. Identifying the obstacles that keep people from engaging in prevention and intervention; and
2. Minimizing, eliminating or overcoming these obstacles.

After watching some of Dr. Edwards Green Dot Training in Las Vegas, one truth that struck me was that even honest, upstanding, “good” people sometimes don’t intervene when observing a potentially harmful situation. She offers viable solutions and new directions in violence prevention efforts — and with an amazing level of passion and conviction. Her presentations are more than educational. She’s one of the only speakers I’ve ever listened to for more than an hour and still felt completely engaged and entertained.

I’ll be sure to attend Dr. Edwards workshop at NSAC — learning more about how to build the world I want to live in.

In the Summer 2010 issue of Transforming Communities‘ newsletter Catalyst, there a a very funny and insightful glossary of common prevention terms:

Prevention: shutting down the war machine instead of applying bandages
Evidence-Based: almost impossible to replicate but a pretty good idea anyway
Positive Assets: all the things your grandparents swear that they had more of back in the good old days
Promotion: it’s sorta like having a GPS to get the world we want
Bystander: um… you, yeah you, and your friends over there, too
Adult Influencers: people over 25 who interact in some way with young people (i.e. all adults)
Evaluation and Documentation: the scrapbook you keep from a trip so other can enjoy your journey later

What other fun definitions can you think of?  ”Social Ecology:  Taking care of the earth while talking to a friend.”  Maybe I should skip the attempt for humor.

Transforming Communities is a valuable resource providing technical assistance training and resources to create safety, justice and equality. They are doing some great prevention work. This issue also has great articles on practicing transformation, including a discussion of themes of lessons from prevention work. Check it out!

Used with permission www.unh.edu/preventioninnovations/

In the study recently ePublished in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Sharyn Potter and her colleagues at the University of New Hampshire have found that students who identify with the subjects in a poster campaign are more likely to take some action toward the prevention of violence against women.

The posters series, Know Your Power, depicts scenarios of students taking action as active bystanders to interrupt abuse. The poster above has this dialogue among three men at a party with alcohol:

“I’m gonna to get Kali so wasted she can’t say no.”

“That’s messed up. If you are going to do that you have to leave now.”

“If you want to get with a girl, that not the way to do it.”

The authors suggest:

Previous research indicates that in-person education programs tend to be more effective than passive intervention methods. Yet our findings show that the Know Your Power social marketing campaign raises awareness about the incidence of sexual violence on campus and the importance of taking action to reduce sexual violence on campus even when controlling for previous participation in a prevention program.

Indeed, changes come not only from education, but also from well planned marketing efforts.  And when education is coordinated with marketing we create an environment conducive to even more change.

It is interesting to read about how the authors measured the shifts. One tool is the “Readiness to Change” model adapted for sexual violence prevention which was developed by University of New Hampshire colleagues. More can be found in Victoria Banyard’s January 2010 article Sexual Violence Prevention: The Role of Stages of Change. Here are the different stages in this scale:

1. I don’t think sexual assault is a big problem on campus.
2. I don’t think there is much I can do about sexual assault on campus.
3. There isn’t much need for me to think about sexual assault on campus, that’s the job of the crisis center.
4. Sometimes I think I should learn more about sexual assault but I haven’t done so yet.
5. I think I can do something about sexual assault and am planning to find out what I can do about the problem.
6. I am planning to learn more about the problem of sexual assault on campus.
7. I have recently attended a program about sexual assault.
8. I am actively involved in projects to deal with sexual assault on campus.
9. I have recently taken part in activities or volunteered my time on projects focused on ending sexual assault on campus.

This scale suggests useful concepts that can support the measurement of sexual violence prevention.  By trying to have prevention efforts focus on making shifts in these nine areas, we have a useful theoretical model. I am interested in seeing this work informing more sexual violence prevention efforts.

Here is the full abstract and link to these articles.

Sexual Violence Prevention: The Role of Stages of Change

Banyard VL,  Eckstein RP,  Moynihan MM Journal of Interpersonal Violence, January 2010; vol. 25, 1: pp. 111-135.

Click here for a link to the article on the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2010, Sage Publications)

Increasing numbers of empirical studies and theoretical frameworks for preventing sexual violence are appearing in the research- and practice-based literatures. The consensus of this work is that although important lessons have been learned, the field is still in the early stages of developing and fully researching effective models, particularly for the primary prevention of this problem in communities. The purpose of this article is to discuss the utility of applying the transtheoretical model of readiness for change to sexual violence prevention and evaluation. A review of this model and its application in one promising new primary prevention program is provided, along with exploratory data about what is learned about program design and effectiveness when the model is used. The study also represents one of the first attempts to operationalize and create specific measures to quantify readiness for change in the context of sexual violence prevention and evaluation. Implications for program development and evaluation research are discussed.

Using Social Self-Identification in Social Marketing Materials Aimed at Reducing Violence Against Women on Campus.

Potter SJ, Moynihan MM, Stapleton JG. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2010; ePublished June 3, 2010

Click here for a link to the abstract on the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2010, Sage Publications)

Bystander-focused in person sexual violence prevention programs provide an opportunity for skill development among bystanders and for widening the safety net for survivors. A social marketing campaign was designed modeling prosocial bystander behavior and using content familiar to target audience members by staging and casting scenes to look similar to the people and situations that the target audience regularly encounters. We refer to this sense of familiarity as social self-identification. In this exploratory study, we attempt to understand how seeing oneself and one’s peer group (e.g., social self-identification) in poster images affects target audience members’ (e.g., college students) willingness to intervene as a prosocial bystander. The posters in the social marketing campaign were displayed throughout a midsize northeastern public university campus and neighboring local businesses frequented by students. During the last week of the 4-week poster display, the university’s homepage portal featured an advertisement displaying a current model of an iPod offering undergraduate students an opportunity to win the device if they completed a community survey. We found that among students who had seen the posters, those who indicated that the scenes portrayed in the posters looked like situations that were familiar to them were significantly more likely to contemplate taking action in preventing a situation where sexual violence had the potential to occur. Furthermore, students who indicated familiarity with the poster content were more likely to indicate that they had acted in a manner similar to those portrayed in the poster. Future directions based on findings from this exploratory study are discussed.

Today is the opening of the summer blockbuster film Eclipse, the third film of the Twilight saga.

Bella is graduating from high school and feels pressured to make a choice between Edward and Jacob. Should your choices be defined by or limited to your relationships?

Start Strong Idaho asks this question in its Facebook campaign and last night hosted a “Campaign for the Third Choice” event (with music, fun Eclipse events and prizes) in Boise, Idaho.  As we discussed in the PreventConnect podcast Building healthy teen, vampire, and werewolf relationships, Start Strong Idaho is using the popular Twilight movies to promote prevention of teen dating violence.

Start Strong Idaho: Building Healthy Teen Relationships is an initiative in southwest Idaho to promote healthy teen relationships and prevent teen dating violence by helping 11- to 14-year-olds develop healthy and safe relationship knowledge and skills. It is part of the Start Strong Initiative, a national program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The recently published edition of Moving Upstream, the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance‘s newsletter on primary prevention,  is the first of a 2-part series examining organizational development toward primary prevention at sexual and domestic violence agencies. Check out this valuable resource.

It is great to see an article in the Journal of The Medical Association of Thailand that calls for a nation wide school-based program to promote gender equity to prevent sexual violence.  When will we see this in the United States?

The full citation, abstract and link to full text follow the jump.

Gender roles, physical and sexual violence prevention in primary extend to secondary school in Samutsakorn Province, Thailand.

Chamroonsawasdi K, Suparp J, Kittipichai W, Khajornchaikul P. Journal of The Medical Association of Thailand 2010; 93(3): 358-65.

Click here for full text.

(Copyright © 2010, Medical Association of Thailand)

OBJECTIVE: To enhance positive attitude and life skills on gender roles to prevent physical and sexual violence.

MATERIAL AND METHOD: A whole school-based participatory learning program using a quasi-experimental study with pre and post test design was conducted among 2 schools during June-September, 2005. The experimental group, were 134 students in a primary school and 179 students in a secondary school. While the control group, were 122 students in a primary school and 95 students in secondary school.

RESULTS: Means score of attitude toward gender roles before implementation in the experimental group was significantly lower than the control group (p < 0.05). After implementation, the means score in the experimental group was not significantly different from the control group (p > 0.05). Means paired different score (after-before) between the two groups was significantly different (p = 0.002).

CONCLUSION: A whole school-based program on gender roles and violence prevention is suitable for youths and should be merged as school curricula and expanded as a nationwide program at all level of education. Gender equity should be taught at an early childhood. Parental involvement in school-based activities should be negotiated.

Why do some professionals believe there is only one solution to a problem?  Complicated issues, like health care, global warming and sexual violence / domestic violence, require comprehensive solutions.  So I was surprised when I saw the title of the letter from Andy Klein appearing in February 2010 issue of the  National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention is “DV is not a public health problem.” Klein claims that

Declaring DV to be a public health emergency takes our eyes off the ball. DV is a criminal justice emergency, a continuing failure of the criminal justice system to stop criminals from committing crimes repeatedly. Well intended counseling by health professional will not stop their patients’ victimizers.

I will not reduce addressing domestic violence to criminal justice solutions. However, in this article, Klein reduces public health response to health care providers screening while suggesting the value of medical personnel is to “assist law enforcement” by recording victim reports of abuse.

I see a public health approach as much more than screening. Klein identifies Swine flu as a public health emergency (though public health people call it H1N1). The incidence of domestic violence and sexual assault exceed that of Swine flu; and its impact is significant to people’s health and well-being. In a PreventConnect eLearning unit on social justice and public health, I examine how the lessons learned from public health response to disease can influence our efforts to prevent sexual violence.

Public health is more than epidemiology, health care and infectious disease control.  I studied Community Health Education where I learned how public health provided some valuable ways to address issues such as domestic violence and sexual assault:

• Public health changes the conditions of a community and society to solve a problem,
• Public health addresses the root causes,
• Public health goes beyond responding to the problem,
• Public health seeks to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Public health informed efforts such as DELTA, Rape Prevention & Education, and StartStrong are engaging communities to take action to prevent domestic violence, sexual abuse and teen dating violence. PreventConnect is a online community of people using public health concepts to advance prevention.

I agree with Andy Klein there are limits to the public health approach to preventing domestic violence and sexual violence. A public health framework alone is not enough to understand the problem and develop the solutions; we have to also look to other approaches, such as human rights and justice.  While there are some elements common to public health success stories like tobacco prevention and using car seats, the work to end domestic violence and sexual assault is more similar to the work of the civil rights movement: we must shift norms of how we define men and women, relationships and family, and power itself.

How have you found public health concepts helpful to developing domestic violence and sexual violence prevention initiatives?

The Engaged Bystander blog from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center is collecting stories of what people  have done or witnessed someone else do that exhibit positive bystander engagement to prevent sexual violence.  (Click here for PreventConnect‘s eLearning unit on engaging bystanders.)

Here is my story of a small action — only an “evil stare” to interrupt rape culture. And this story shows how just saying where we work may make a difference.

This took place sometime in the mid-1980s while I was giving blood.  As I was laying down with the needle in my arm, the male nurse asked me what I did for work. I responded that “I worked for the National Clearinghouse on Martial Rape.” I was then surprised when he responded by saying “I practice that every night.”

Here I was laying down, feeling weak, and I heard this anemic rape joke.  So I mustered all the energy I could and made my best effort to give him an evil stare.  It seemed to work, as he apologized and we talked about why such jokes are troubling.

I shared my story, what is your story? Click here to share your story.

Ending sexual violence takes more than being against rape.  We have must be for something.  The Washington Coalition Against Sexual Assault Programs has a wonderful Sexual Assault Awareness Month project asking people to share what they stand for.

To join this campaign print out a flag saying “I am anti sexual violence and pro _______” and then send a picture to a great Flickr photostream.  Examples of what people are pro include consent, slippers, s’mores and Joey Ramone.

Check it out here.

The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault has joined the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence and the California Department for Public Health to release a summary of the three statewide organization’s work to prevent sexual violence, intimate partner violence and dating violence. The statement highlights the shared goals of each organization’s prevention efforts.  Each organization has collaborated with the others to build the capacity of agencies to conduct prevention activities in California.

More details can be found in each organization’s prevention programs:

• CDPH’s Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) Program Strategic Plan for Building State and Local Capacity to End Sexual Violence: 2010-2013
• CALCASA’s 2010 Prevention Training Plan
• CPEDV’s Advancing Domestic Violence Prevention in California: CPEDV’s Plan for Prevention Advocacy, Leadership and Capacity-building 2009-2013

Click here for the statement.

Click here for the 2010 California Statewide Prevention Calendar.

The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault is please to announce its 2010 training topics for prevention. As the training and technical assistance provider funded by the California Department of Public Health, CALCASA is holding these trainings and web conferences for California’s Rape Prevention and Education grantees.

CALCASA will offer both in person and web conference trainings. Look at this blog for announcements of dates and when registration is open.

In Person Trainings:

How to Measure Prevention: An all day workshop to give participants hands on experience in developing evaluation programs for their prevention programs.  This training will be held in Sacramento in May, 2010.

MyStrength Campaign Training: A two day training for California’s rape crisis centers and their partners on implementing the MyStrength Campaign, including a focus on MyStrength Club.  Sending a team of a program director/executive director and MyStrength Club facilitator is strongly recommended. This training will be held in Sacramento in August, 2010.

Prevention Track at National Sexual Assault Conference. This year’s Leadership Conference will be held as part of the National Sexual Assault Conference in Los Angeles, CA on September 1-3, 2010. Participants will be able to learn from national leaders presenting on state-of-the-art prevention efforts. CALCASA will provide stipends to California Rape Crisis Centers to support travel and lodging expenses.

Web Conferences

Framing: Developing the language to support sexual violence prevention efforts (March 25, 2010) Click here to register for this web conference.

Local Policy to Advance Prevention (June TBD 2010) This web conference will explore strategies to advance prevention policies on a local level.

Creating Organization Change to Advance Prevention (September TBD 2010) This web conference will examine what steps organizations can take to integrate prevention activities.

Contact David Lee or Chad Sniffen at CALCASA for more information about these trainings.

Last week there was a vibrant discussion on the PreventConnect Email Group about the efficacy of one time presentation for sexual violence prevention. As a community of prevention practitioners and researchers, many people shared their experiences, knowledge and insights about this subject. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this group to consider this important question.

If you want to see the full thread, you need to join the email group and look in the archives (starting with message #6325). Here are some highlights of the conversation.

Since single presentations are all that is often available to prevention educators, many people commented on how they use the opportunity wisely as they shared positive experiences with leading single presentations.

Yet, a comprehensive prevention strategy is more than one presentation. Many years ago when working in a domestic violence agency I stopped doing single presentations. Instead, I made presentations as long as I also was able to implement additional strategy such as peer education program or implement district-wide policies.

Perhaps the most important questions behind this is “What does ‘work’ mean?” Grant Stancliff of Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs referred to his article “Single Presentations and Prevention” in Partners in Social Change (Spring 2009) where he addressed this issue:

Is a single presentation really prevention? The short answer is: no. Not usually. This does not mean single presentations do not have a use, however. Single presentations are and will continue to be used effectively for systems coordination and to let partners and community members know about sexual assault, services provided, and the role of sexual assault services within the community. Systems coordination-the how and what of working together-is essential for connecting services to survivors, but is not prevention.

Jennifer Rauhouse of Peer Solutions suggested the following:

I think it is important to understand why you want to give a one-time presentation. Is it to recruit participants into on-going prevention efforts? That can be very effective as long as your workshop is empowering and positive. If it is to change behaviors or meet a funding quota I would say spend your time building relationships with community members. I have a dream that our SV/IPV Movement will move away from one time or even multiple sessions to activities that focus on community and societal level change v. individual level change which is what most of the workshops across the country seem to do.

Program evaluator Stephanie Townsend point out that

…there is the possibility that a FOCUSED presentation that BUILDS SKILLS may be effective as a component of prevention. Specifically, I’m thinking of Vicki Banyard’s work in evaluating bystander empowerment programs. Some of her studies have found positive effects from single-session bystander programs. However, note that the behavioral effects are on BYSTANDER behaviors where individuals intervene in potential assault situations and in expressions of rape culture. I think bystander programs show a lot of promise in many ways. But, again, we can’t interpret their success as changing the behaviors of actual or potential perpetrators. The would-be perpetrator will still try to perpetrate — the difference is that others will intervene to prevent him from succeeding in his attempt. I think it’s important to keep that distinction in mind. We need to be clear about what it is we are achieving and what it is we are not with any prevention strategy so that we can build comprehensive and effective approaches to community and social change.

These were only a few of the many excellent points made in the discussion.

What you do think is the role of one time presentations? And how do they fit into a comprehensive prevention approach?

Caroline Palmer, staff attorney at the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, has written a very nice article in the March 2010 issue of the Violence Against Women Monitor about the importance of primary prevention.
She writes

“…we’ve asked ‘How can we lock up the most dangerous?’ We should be asking, ‘How can we prevent the most violence?’ We should be intensely studying the issue and allocating scarce resources to a mix of programs and approaches whose prevention efficacy has empirical support.” (from Janus, 2003) In other words, we should be exploring ways to increase the efficacy of our interventions by also implementing prevention policies. This approach takes a certain amount of courage and patience because prevention strategies require a more long-term commitment – the results of prevention activities are not always immediately apparent, unlike intervention activities that may yield measurable data about convictions within a shorter period of time.

Well said.

What do you think?

The Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (WCSAP) has released its latest issue of Partners in Social Change.  This issue focuses on sexual violence prevention among migrant workers. Articles include an interview with Emiliano Diaz de Leon talking about Migrant Clinicians Network’s Hombres Unidos Contra la Violencia Familiar (Men United Against Family Violence), Kimber Nicoletti on Cosechando mis derechos, A Fotonovela, and selections from Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in The United States.

Click here for a copy of this issue.

As I review the new research published each week on sexual violence and intimate partner violence, sometimes I feel a tension between trusting science and trusting my own beliefs.  There are times that existing research indicates something that I do not believe. In those moments I have to reevaluate my beliefs and determine where I stand.  Sometimes current research will shift my thinking; and there are times that a research study does not convince me, either because the research was framed problematically, is limited in its scope, and/or is not answering the crucial question.

This brings me to a recent study on rape prevention written by Foubert et. al. ePublished in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.  This study examines The Men’s Program, which is described in this study as had having long-term success in changing men’s attitudes and behaviors about rape (according to studies previously conducted by Foubert et. al.)

The program is designed to increase men’s empathy with survivors of sexual assault.  Here is the description of the program from the article:

…presenters of The Men’s Program show a DVD describing a male-on-male rape experience designed to teach men how a rape experience might feel describing a male-on- male rape experience designed to teach men how a rape experience might feel. After the video is shown, presenters process the video, noting the presumably heterosexual orientation of the perpetrators… and they follow this by making connections between a male-on-male and a male-on-female rape experience to facilitate empathy toward rape survivors. Later, men are taught how to support a rape survivor. Men then learn the basics of defining sexual consent and hear strategies for confronting peers as bystanders when they overhear others tell jokes about rape, act in ways that demean women, or brag about abusing women. Following that, men are taken through a guided imagery of a woman close to them who experiences rape under the influence of alcohol while a bystander watches and does nothing. … Participants then brainstorm ways that they could intervene in situations where an alcohol-related rape might occur. The program itself lasts about 1 hr and is usually presented by four undergraduate male peer educators, often part of peer education groups named One in Four…

I am uncomfortable with this program.  The video used in it was designed to train male law enforcement officers to understand what the experience of female victims of sexual assault.  Its graphically highlights the grotesqueness of the rapists and of the actual assault. I can see how the video has impact on male participants as they are guided to consider the experience of being violated. But I am unsure that will lead men to see their own behavior as the same way as the male-on-male stranger rape described in the video.

And I have several questions: Does this video retraumatize men who have been sexually assaulted? Would the homophobia of some men be reinforced by the situation portrayed in the video?

Based on my experiences as a sexual violence prevention educator and the approaches that I am comfortable with, I would not use this video in prevention program.

Yet, in this study and in several other studies Foubert et. al. have demonstrated positive results in reducing rape acceptance myths and decreasing self-reported likelihood of raping.  How do I balance the results of these studies with what I think about the prevention program itself? Do these scientific findings warrant overriding my thoughts on this program?

In my understanding of evidence bases, there are several types of evidence: research based evidence, experiential evidence and contextual evidence.  To understand the use of evidence we need to consider all types, not only evidence from research. (Click here for a PreventConnect web conference describing of these types of evidence.)

I really like this recent study’s use of qualitative measures to ask college student men about the impact of the program after they participated in a One in Four presentation. (The students were evaluated at the end of their Sophomore year after being exposed to the program as first-year students in September) I share with the researchers the value of gathering data when using the method of asking open questions like “Are any of your attitudes now different as a result of seeing the program?” and “Have there been any situations in which you have behaved any differently in any situation as a result of seeing the program?” These types of questions provide a systematic way to collect information on how a prevention program makes an impact on its participants. In fact, I often recommend this methodology as part of a good strategy to evaluate prevention programs.

When I read this study and reviewed previous research, I had to reexamine my concerns. After considerable reflection, I still remain skeptical about aspects of this program:

• One hour presentations alone seem unlikely to really change behavior. One hour is not long enough to process both attempts at empathy enhancement and effective bystander intervention skills training. The program’s bystander training is limited to having participants brainstorm bystander responses. Research on effective prevention programs suggests that dosage (the amount of time receiving information) is an important element for useful change in prevention work. I do think that one hour presentations could be a useful piece of a comprehensive prevention effort.
• An empathy-based framework for prevention is problematic in sexual violence.  While empathy seem intuitively helpful to understand a victim perspective, it is not clear to me that this approach is what changes a potential perpetrating behavior. Once agin, empathy makes sense to me as part of a prevention effort.
• While the authors claim in this article that “…Schewe also reported that depicting a man as a survivor always led to lowering rape myth acceptance or likelihood of raping yet depicting a female survivor in programs for men either increased men’s rape myth acceptance or their likelihood of sexual aggression.” (Italics in original) My review of Schewe’s chapter find only the recommendation that when conducting empathy exercises, interventions should include a male as a victim.  I did not see any claims of always lowering rape myth acceptance or likelihood of sexual aggression. The apparent exaggeration in this study is troublesome to me.
• I would like to see more research on this program conducted by an independent researcher in a replicated setting, instead of all of the research conducted only by the developer of the program.
• And I don’t like the key element of the prevention program – the use of the video.

I want to see effective strategies that lead to men not raping women. I want to see positive results. And I want to use research to improve our prevention efforts.

And I want a program that I can stand behind.

Is The Men’s Program a way to do this? What do you think?

See below for full citation and abstract on this article.

In Their Own Words: Sophomore College Men Describe Attitude and Behavior Changes Resulting From a Rape Prevention Program 2 Years After Their Participation.

Foubert JD, Godin EE, Tatum JL. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2009; ePublished December 29, 2009.

Click here for a link to the abstract on the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2009, Sage Publications)

The study conducted involved assessing students from a Southeastern public university during two academic years, after their participation in an all-male sexual assault peer education program. The study findings revealed that 79% of 184 college men reported attitude change, behavior change, or both. Furthermore, a multistage inductive analysis revealed that after seeing The Men’s Program, men intervened to prevent rapes from happening. Participants also modified their behavior to avoid committing sexual assault when they or a potential partner were under the influence of alcohol. Implications for future research were discussed.

As the national online community dedicated to advancing primary prevention of sexual violence and intimate partner violence, Prevent Connect hosts a series of popular web conferences. These web conferences are lively discussions where participants engage with guests to explore a wide range of prevention topics.

The theme for the web conferences in 2010 will be Changing Norms to Prevent Sexual Violence and Intimate Partner Violence. Prevent Connect’s key partner Prevention Institute will lead the web conferences to explore specific strategies to change the norms that contribute to sexual violence, intimate partner violence and teen dating violence.

Each web conference will explore one of the five norms identified by Prevention Institute as contributing to violence against women. Below is an interview with Annie Lyles and Christine Chang of Prevention Institute describing what these web conferences will explore.

The dates and topics are:

• “Violence is Everywhere”: Countering a culture of violence through norms change (March 9; repeated March 16, 2010)
• Growing Boys into Men: Countering traditional masculinity through norms change (May 26; repeated May 27, 2010)
• From Girls to Women: Countering limited roles for women through norms change (July 29; repeated August 5, 2010)
• Under Control: Countering the value placed on power and control through norms change (August 26, 2010; repeated September 8, 2010)
• My Business: Countering secrecy and privacy around violence through norms change (September 28; repeated September 29, 2010)

This series of web conferences builds on a foundation of understanding primary prevention examined in previous web conferences.  For a concise summary of these concepts, I recommend you watch these two eLearning units before attending once of the web conferences.

• Changing Norms to Prevent Violence Against Women (8 minutes)
• The Spectrum of Prevention to Develop Comprehensive Strategies to Prevent Violence Against Women (8 minutes)

All web conferences are held at 11 AM Pacific Time (2 PM Eastern Time; 1 PM Central Time, Noon Mountain Time)  All web conferences are available at no cost.  All you need is a phone line, internet connection and a computer.

Check out Prevent Connect’s website to see when registration is open. The first web conference’s registration opens on February 23, 2010. These sessions tend to fill up quickly so make sure you are registered to receive notice. (Click here to sign up for the mailing list.)

Looking for Potential Guests: Prevent Connect is looking for sexual violence, intimate partner violence and dating violence practitioners who are engaged in promising practices to change norms.  If you know of a program that might be highlighted for one of the web conferences please contact Prevent Connect.

See you online.

Prevent Connect is a national program of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and supported with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Business leaders, faith leaders, government agencies, sports organizations joined sexual violence prevention practitioners to figure out how to prevent sexual violence in their communities. On December 3-4, 2010, over 200 people gathered in St. Paul at the Minnesota Summit to Prevent Sexual Violence.  (See my previous blog on the Summit.) The summary report has just been released highlighting the plans and actions that will be taken in Minnesota as a result of this summit.

PreventConnect attended the summit with its video and audio recorder.  We have recordings of the speakers from the Summit, videos demonstrating the integration of the arts in this work, and an interview with Summit organizers Donna Dunn, Cordelia Anderson and Patty Wetterling describing the Summit’s highlights.

Please click here for a summary of the Summit recordings and a link to the Summit’s Final Report.

As we are half way through Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month and planning for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I have been thinking about the role of awareness in prevention efforts. In a recent post, The Social Butterfly blog asks

So, why, fellow health marketing and do-gooders do we settle with “awareness-building?” To be frank, every time I’m in a meeting and I hear the word awareness, my skin crawls. Awareness is great–but there’s a time and place for it. I’m aware of Ritz crackers, but I buy Wheat Thins. I’m aware of Powerade, but I buy Gatorade. There are times I might know about your cause–but I won’t donate. Other times I might know you need help, but I won’t volunteer. I know exercise is healthy, yet I’m still sitting here typing this blog post. There is a reason to these behaviors and decisions. There are motivations, barriers, incentives, costs, and more.

For sexual violence and domestic violence prevention, I think we need to build our prevention efforts upon our successful awareness efforts.  30 years ago, people did not know about domestic violence and saw rape as only being committed by strangers. Today, our awareness efforts have made significant changes, but we still have work to do to prevent rape and domestic violence.

What do you think?

(Click here to see the entire Social Butterfly blog on “Questions to Prevent Awareness Fever.”)

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center is starting its Letters for an Engaged Bystander blog to explore how people can intervene to prevent sexual violence. Bystander approaches to prevention are among the most promising as all members of the community have an opportunity to make a difference.

In this interview with Joan Tabachnick, the Editor of Letters for an Engaged Bystander, we discuss the practice of teaching bystander intervention and the goals of the new blog.

PreventConnect has featured many of the leading bystander thinkers and programs in its web conferences and interviews. Listen to speakers talk about Bringing in the Bystander from University of New Hampshire, Mentors in Violence Prevention, Dorothy Edwards of Green Dot, and the work of Alan Berkowitz.

The new blog will be edited by guest blogger Joan Tabachnick who will explores the powerful ways that we can all choose to do something to prevent sexual violence.  Joan, the author of Engaging Bystanders in Violence Against Women Prevention, was interviewed by PreventConnect in this podcast to describe the value of bystander work to prevent sexual violence.

Share your stories and describe your insights into engaging bystanders.  I look forward to this discussion. The blog can be found here.

For a concise online summary of bystander work, check out PreventConnect’s ten minute eLearning unit on Engaging Bystanders in Violence Against Women Prevention.

DELTA PREP is an initiative to support 19 state domestic violence coalitions to build their capacity to conduct primary prevention.  The effort is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with the CDC Foundation. As last week’s National Leadership Committee meeting in Atlanta, we discussed how to support the growth and development of intimate partner violence prevention efforts.

One of the key steps identified by the participants was the need to honor and recognize the existing domestic violence movement and current efforts to prevent violence in relationships.  This work takes place in many sectors: state coalitions with DELTA funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local domestic violence agencies, and grassroots community groups making changes in their community to eradicate domestic violence.

While the public health field brings helpful prevention language, concepts and experiences, the domestic violence movement brings core values and a vibrant history of action.  In addition to providing services to those who are abused and holding accountable those who commit abuse, those people and organizations involved in domestic violence work are engaged in making fundamental changes to our society so domestic violence does not exist.

Just think of the changes over the last 30 years.  Here are just a few: “domestic violence” is language known to most people; better laws are in place; resources are available; government provides funding for domestic violence services and prevention; and sermons on domestic violence are heard in churches, mosques and temples throughout the country. The incredible increase of awareness and engagement of many sectors to address domestic violence provides a valuable foundation for our prevention efforts.

There is much more work to do to prevent intimate partner violence and sexual abuse. As we expand efforts to build prevention, we also should celebrate the work that has and is being done. Thank you for your work!

Last weekend I attended a gathering to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Oakland Men’s Project (OMP), a pioneering organization dedicated to preventing men’s violence against women. While the organization formally closed its doors in 1999, the reverberations of OMP’s work still resonate today.

When OMP started in the late 1970s, most men interested in ending men’s violence worked with men who batter. OMP decided early on to take a different tact; they would be dedicated to social change through prevention and education. Their work blended exercises, role plays and an analysis exploring the links between ending oppression and male violence. At Oakland Men’s Project men and women worked together to create social change.  After being featured on Oprah, Oakland Men’s Project became known as a national resource.

Oakland Men’s Project’s legacy includes many books such as “Helping Teen Stop Violence” (authors Paul Kivel and Allan Creighton are working on a 20th anniversary edition), “Men’s Work”, “Young Women’s Lives”, and “Making the Peace.” Exercises such as the “Act Like a Man Box” have become stables of gender socialization units for countless sexual violence and domestic violence prevention programs throughout the country and the world.

During the celebration, we went around the room sharing how OMP’s work influenced their lives. I heard how some people learned to value their own voices through this work. Others explained how they had to integrate this work into how they raise their children. Many shared stories on how they learned from each other – their mentors, their peers and the people they were teaching.

Attendees from the OMP reunion

The work of Oakland Men’s Project, its related projects and the mentoring from many of its members provided me with a foundation for my work in the movement to prevent violence against women. As I learned new strategies (such as public health), I continue to embrace the importance of social justice and being an ally to ending oppression as key elements of my work.

And the work continues today. We heard the children of OMP staff demonstrate how they are engaged in social change, leadership program participants highlighted how they are inspired to continue on, and former staff told how they integrate this work into their current efforts.

How has Oakland Men’s Project influenced your work to prevent sexual violence and domestic violence?

Brad Perry

In this interview with Brad Perry, Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator for the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance (VSDVAA), Perry talks to CALCASA’s David Lee about the VSDVAA’s Guidelines for the Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence & Intimate Partner Violence. These Guidelines are a synthesis of prevention research, practical implementation experience, and the public health perspective. Perry and Lee talk about the process of developing of the Guidelines, and review the opportunities and challenges for prevention work that the Guidelines represent.

VSDVAA’s Guidelines for the Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence & Intimate Partner Violence

[podcast]http://www.preventconnect.org/podcasts/V22%20Brad%20Perry.mp3[/podcast]

The blog Richmond Confidential published this article highlighting the local crisis center, Community Violence Solutions, and its use of the MyStrength Campaign to prevent sexual violence.

Days after the Richmond High rape, crisis center director Rhonda James said that she had a training that could have prevented or lessened the severity of the attack on the teenage girl. The October rape horrified the local community and drew national attention to the city. Richmond residents were stunned by reports of up to 20 bystanders who witnessed and cheered on multiple assailants as they raped a 16-year-old girl for more than 2 hours. [Click here for the entire article.]

A new article “Alcohol consumption and women’s vulnerability to sexual victimization: can reducing women’s drinking prevent rape?” in the journal Substance Use and Misuse addresses the thorny issue of the relationship between potential victim’s alcohol use and sexual assault.  While I am pleased to see that the purpose of this analysis is to explore the existing literature on these subjects to inform prevention practices, I do have concerns.

This article raises several interesting questions. The first concern I have regards the problematic nature of focusing on victim behavior, not perpetration behaviors. Should we expect women to prevent themselves from “getting raped?” This risk-reduction approach was creatively challenged in the recent blog postings shifting common “safety hints” for women to not get abused, to focus instead on the perpetrators behavior.

Indeed the authors, did discuss this issue:

We do not mean to suggest that women who consume alcohol are responsible for their own victimization. Few would dispute that it is the perpetrator, nearly always male, who is responsible for sexual victimization and that it is imperative that prevention efforts target male perpetration. Nonetheless, without in any way blaming the victim, it is also responsible to help women to reduce their risk of sexual victimization by altering the behaviors that increase their vulnerability….

Because victimization is something that happens to a person, rather than something that one does, women’s drinking cannot be said to directly cause victimization. A woman who drinks to the point of incapacitation is arguably at no greater risk of victimization than a sober woman as long as she drinks alone in her home. Rather, a woman’s drinking increases her vulnerability by virtue of her drinking in settings in which there is a potential perpetrator in proximity.

Two conclusions by the authors have important implications for prevention efforts

It appears that a substantial proportion of alcohol consumption-involved sexual assaults are actually instances of incapacitated rape that occurred as a direct result of the victim’s heavy drinking

It appears that most incidents of incapacitated rape follow voluntary consumption of large amounts of alcohol as opposed to deliberate intoxication of the woman by a perpetrator. “Date rape drugs” appear to play a role in only a very small proportion of incidents of incapacitated rape.

Based on these conclusions, the authors suggest that sexual assault prevention “…should focus on reducing women’s voluntary heavy consumption of alcohol.”

The implications for rape prevention force use to consider how substance abuse prevention and sexual assault prevention efforts are coordinated and perhaps integrated.

How doe your prevention program address these issues?

Here is the full abstract and citation to the article:

Alcohol consumption and women’s vulnerability to sexual victimization: can reducing women’s drinking prevent rape?

Testa M, Livingston JA. Substance Abuse and Misuse 2009; 44(9-10): 1349-76.

Click here for a link to the article at the journal’s web site.

(Copyright © 2009, Taylor and Francis Group)

Before effective prevention interventions can be developed, it is necessary to identify the mechanisms that contribute to the targeted negative outcomes. A review of the literature on women’s substance use and sexual victimization points to women’s heavy episodic drinking as a proximal risk factor, particularly among college samples. At least half of sexual victimization incidents involve alcohol use and the majority of rapes of college women occur when the victim is too intoxicated to resist (“incapacitated rape”). Despite the importance of women’s heavy episodic drinking as being a risk factor, existing rape prevention programs have rarely addressed women’s alcohol use and have shown little success in reducing rates of sexual victimization. We argue that given the strength of the association between heavy episodic drinking and sexual victimization among young women, prevention programs targeting drinking may prove more efficacious than programs targeting sexual vulnerability. Applications of existing drinking prevention strategies to reducing women’s sexual victimization are discussed.

Over 200 people gathered for the Minnesota Summit to Prevent Sexual Violence on December 3-4, 2009 in St. Paul, MN.  The attendees included the typical people who attend events about sexual violence: representatives of local rape crisis centers, public health officials, people from the criminal justice system, and the occasional political figure.

However, this gathering was very different. Many people came to explore how preventing sexual violence is their business. There were faith leaders, athletic group leaders, hoteliers, restaurant owners, business leaders, artists and many elected officials.

The intent of the summit was clear: “The bottom line is prevention.” As Patty Wetterling said, “It is time to address the environment that feeds sexual violence in order to inoculate our culture against it.”

Together, they discussed more than problem of sexual violence, but also explored the solution.  Actually, they did more than explore the solution; they made commitments to take action to prevent sexual violence.

This gathering focused on how to develop activities to prevent sexual violence.  Going beyond education, participants considered what policies their organizations could take to advance prevention.  With laptop computers at each table and each person having an individual device to weigh in on polls (with the results shown instantly), people shared ideas on what their next steps will be.

Building on the strategic plan for sexual violence prevention created earlier in the year by the Minnesota’s Department of Health, the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault organized this Summit in partnership with many state departments (Health, Education, Corrections, Public Safety and Human Services) and several funders (Bush Foundation, Otto Bremer Foundation and the Mayo Clinic.)

PreventConnect recorded many of speakers and will release podcasts of these recordings in early 2010 when the organizers will release a report summarizing what actions will be taken.

What will you and your organization do to prevent sexual violence?

What makes someone take bystander action to intervene?  A new paper in the journal Spanish Journal of Psychology examines the role of bystander perceptions and differences when one considers intervening or mediating in an abusive situation. The full citation and link to the article follow the jump:

Public responses to intimate partner violence against women: the influence of perceived severity and personal responsibility.

Gracia E, Garcia F, Lila M. Spanish Journal of Psychology 2009; 12(2): 648-56.

Click here for a link to the article

(Copyright © 2009, Complutense University of Madrid)

This paper explored public willingness to act when exposed to cases of intimate partner violence against women, by analyzing the influence of perceived severity and personal responsibility on two types of responses: mediating and reporting to the police. Results (N = 419) yielded main effects of personal responsibility for both types of responses. No main effects of perceived severity were found. A significant interaction between perceived severity and personal responsibility was found only for reporting responses. Results are discussed in light of the helping behavior research tradition. Implications for public education and advocacy programs are also considered.

To prevent sexual violence, we need to understand both factors that contribute to the problem; and develop a theory on how our efforts can prevent it. Donna Garske of Transforming Communities talks about having a “Theory of the Problem” and a “Theory of Change.”

I find this to be a very helpful set of concepts.  While each of these theories need to compliment each other, they are not the same.  For example, it is not reasonable to expect that understanding why rape happens (theory of the problem) is sufficient to change behavior.  What we have learned from behavior theory is that more than information is necessary to change someone’s behavior.

First, how do we develop our theory of the problem? I thought about this when I saw the first line of the abstract of the new article Sexually Coercive Behavior in Male Youth: Population Survey of General and Specific Risk Factors: “Little is known about risk/protective factors for sexually coercive behavior in general population youth.”

If we want to prevent perpetration of sexual violence, we need to draw on lessons learned on why people rape.  Some people look at David Lisak’s work on the “Undetected Rapist.”  Recently VAWnet put out a Applied Research brief on Using Rapist Risk Factors to Set an Agenda for Rape Prevention I am part of a newly developed Prevention Committee of the Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders (ATSA) to bridge the work of sex offender management and prevention.

Lets get a better understanding of what we are trying to prevent. Then we have to develop our “theory of change” that fits.

Here is the full abstract and a link to the article on the journal’s web site.

Sexually Coercive Behavior in Male Youth: Population Survey of General and Specific Risk Factors.

Kjellgren C, Priebe G, Svedin CG, Langstrom N. Archives of Sexual Behavior 2009; ePublished November 4, 2009

(Copyright © 2009, Springer Science+Business Media)

Little is known about risk/protective factors for sexually coercive behavior in general population youth. We used a Swedish school-based population survey of sexual attitudes and experiences (response rate 77%) and investigated literature-based variables across sexually coercive (SEX), non-sexual conduct problem (CP), and normal control (NC) participants to identify general and specific risk/protective factors for sexual coercion. Among 1,933 male youth, 101 (5.2%) reported sexual coercion (ever talked or forced somebody into genital, oral, or anal sex) (SEX), 132 (6.8%) were classified as CP, and the remaining 1,700 (87.9%) as NC. Of 29 tested variables, 25 were more common in both SEX and CP compared to NC youth, including minority ethnicity, separated parents, vocational study program, risk-taking, aggressiveness, depressive symptoms, substance abuse, sexual victimization, extensive sexual experiences, and sexual preoccupation. When compared to CP youth only, SEX youth more often followed academic study programs, used less drugs and were less risk-taking. Further, SEX more frequently than CP youth reported gender stereotypic and pro-rape attitudes, sexual preoccupation, prostitution, and friends using violent porn. Finally, in a multivariate logistic regression, academic study program, pro-rape attitudes, sexual preoccupation, and less risk-taking independently remained more strongly associated with SEX compared to CP offending. In conclusion, several sociodemographic, family, and individual risk/protective factors were common to non-sexual and sexually coercive antisocial behavior in late adolescence. However, pro-rape cognitions, and sexual preoccupation, were sexuality-related, specific risk factors. The findings could inform preventive efforts and the assessment and treatment of sexually coercive male youth.

The new report from Australia “Respectful Relationships Education: Violence prevention and respectful relationships education in Victorian secondary schools“ offers a comprehensive overview of best practice in violence prevention education in schools. In this report five principles of best practice are identified as key elements of a successful prevention strategy:

• A whole-school approach
• A program framework and logic
• Effective curriculum delivery
• Relevant, inclusive and culturally sensitive practice
• Impact evaluation

Click here to see the report.

The new edition of the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance‘s sexual violence /intimate partner violence prevention newsletter “Moving Upstream” features an article by Wendi Siebold on “Evidence-Based Decision Making.” The article is based on a Prevention Connection web conference held in August 2009.

In a previous blog on this subject I highlight why we need to collect evidence on our prevention work.  I am interested in learning how you create evidence for prevention?

Click here to check out this excellent prevention newsletter.