PreventConnect

What responsibility is ours to own when our youth tell us that the very violence we are working to prevent has and continues to root itself in the hallways they grow up in?

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control released its latest iteration of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The statistics have swept nearly every major headline, telling the same story: Youth in the U.S. need our action. They’re battling hopelessness and despair. They’re experiencing more sexual violence, and for girls, LGBTQ students, many students of color and students whose families are struggling economically, it’s even harder.

For the next four months, we are diving deep into youth engagement: exploring how organizations across our movement are centering youth voices and how that work is transforming their agencies and communities.

For our first installment, we're sitting down with three California Youth Activists, who gathered with peers at the state capitol, call on their legislators and influential adults to do more in schools. They’re sharing why this movement means so much to them, what it’s been like to work with the Partnership and what advice they have for organizations who want to bring youth into their work.

Resources mentioned in this Podcast:

• California Partnership to End Domestic Violence Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month
• Youth in the Lead Outreach Toolkit
• Youth Risk Behavior Survey
• Teen Dating Violence 2023: Resources for the Field

Welcome to PreventConnect: the podcast bringing together voices from across the movement to end gender and power-based violence to give you the tools to practice primary prevention in your daily life and at work.

This season we’re breaking the sihlos, bringing together researchers, scientists and on-the-ground practitioners and organizers, to talk about how we can work together to prevent sexual violence.

We’re going deeper than we ever have: highlighting emerging research, promising strategies, and stories from preventionists and organizers turning data into effective on-the-ground change.

We have a lot to learn from each other. And it starts here.

Where does data and practice meet in our work to end sexual violence?

PreventConnect sat down with David Finkelhor, author of “What works to prevent violence against children online” - a new report from the World Health Organization, to learn about his decades-long research into violence against children. Together, we’re breaking down his findings and connecting our own paths in the field, where they differ and where they come together to make the case for prevention in schools.

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
What works to prevent violence against children online?
Roadmap to Prevention: Connecting Critical Race Theory and Anti-Oppression
PreventConnect Instagram
PreventConnect Linkedin

What does it look like to create space for disability justice in a movement and a culture that is so deeply impacted and dictated by the pursuit of perfection?

For part 2 of our interview with Indiana Disability Justice, we are exploring tangible examples of ways organizations are coming up with creative solutions to centering disability justice across the country, including well as a brand new resource from the Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource Hub to help organizations get started.

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource Hub
Organizational Assessment Tool
[email protected]
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What do we do when the principles of health equity call on us to deconstruct the fabric of how our organizations run and pave a different way forward?

It’s a question Cierra Olivia Thomas-Willaims has watched the field grapple with since she joined the movement more than 20 years ago.

It’s one of the reasons she co-founded Indiana Disability Justice: a grassroots organization of neurodivergent and disabled self-advocates and allies moving toward a world free of harm for people with disabilities by telling the stories of disabled survivors and helping advocates and organizations transform their spaces and policies to center marginalized communities.

For this episode of PreventConnect, we’re exploring Disability Justice as a vehicle for change. One that, when met with readiness, has the potential to transform our movement for *all survivors.

The connection between sexual violence and sports is not a novel conversation in American culture.
We have seen powerful players, coaches, and administrators get called out for their abusive behavior time and time again.

But we also know that sports themselves are not bad. What would happen if we zoomed out from the headlines and thought about the larger system of sports in America as a solution rather than a problem. What if the power of sport could be harnessed to promote health and safety in our communities and model a better way of treating each other?

PreventConnect is sitting down with three co-authors from The Prevention of Sexual Violence in Sport: A Real Game Changer, a new special issue from the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, for a sneak peak at new expert perspective that identifies gaps in sexual violence prevention in sport and provides recommendations to improve prevention efforts.

Resources mentioned in this podcast:
PreventConnect.org
Raliance.org
Link to issue overview: https://www.raliance.org/raliance-experts-new-research-on-preventing-sexual-violence-in-sport/
Link to full issue: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/jiva/37/13-14

What can the leadership of black women and communities of color teach us about joy and resiliency?

As we continue to bear witness to the pandemic of racial injustice, systemic oppression and political and personal attacks on our marginalized communities, joy and resiliency feel like precious resources existing between a juxtaposition of both deeply needed and difficult to find.

This year, leaders in the movement to end gender-based violence, the National Resource Center for Domestic Violence, along with their partners at the Domestic Violence Awareness Project Advisory Group are centering again on their commitment to No Survivor Justice without Racial Justice for the 2022 National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and beyond.

For this episode of PreventConnect, we sat down with two of the organizers for DVAM 20-22 and beyond: two fierce women of color who are leading the movement and their communities, and asked them why joy is so central to their work to end systemic oppression.

We’re also bringing in the voices of leaders of color across this movement. Highlighting key speakers, themes and excerpts from the 42nd annual Day of Unity, which kicked off DVAM in early October, when the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence invited survivors, advocates and leaders to share their own stories about collective liberation.

They shared perspective on how communities of color have found joy through unrelenting resiliency, how they cultivate joy in their own lives and how organizations can get on board in uplifting joy and valuing their staff.

Podcast Guests:

Ivonne Ortiz, Director of Training and TA, NRCDV, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, she/ella

Nnenna Minimah, Owner/Lead Consultant, Mission Avisee, LLC, she/her
https://www.instagram.com/missionavisee/

Call for Unity Speakers:
Jacqueline Miller
Secretary January Contreras
Faranza Safiullah
Vivien Huelgo
Shawnice Stratford

Resources:

https://www.dvawareness.org/DVAM-2022

https://vawnet.org/

https://www.nrcdv.org/

Creativity to meet the moment is one of the most powerful qualities in people working to advance social change, one shared by most prevention practitioners, and it’s invaluable to the movement to end sexual violence. As communities across the U.S. have begun pushing back on Critical Race Theory, Sexual Health and Prevention Education, two state coalitions are meeting the moment with a new publication: School-Based Prevention Roadmap, Connecting the Route of CRT and Anti-Oppression.

PreventConnect sat down with the authors of the School-Based Prevention Roadmap, Sarah Ferrato of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence and Monica Garcia Vega of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence to hear about the landscape they are navigating, how they’re responding and their words to the field.

What does it mean to Embrace Intersectionality in the movement to end sexual and intimate partner violence, while eliminating all forms of oppression to create safe and equitable communities?

How do we center equity in all of our practices, from on the ground work and conversations to strategic planning to data and evaluation and everything in between?

It’s a question organizers are centering in the 2022 National Sexual Assault Conference, centered around virtual community to advance health equity.

We sat with prevention track organizers of the three day virtual even, to learn about what they have in store for attendee and got a sneak peak at some of the workshops they have in store.

This is PreventConnect, the podcast where we bring together voices across the movement to end sexual violence, to give you the tools you need to effectively practice primary prevention in your daily life, and at work.

This is part two in a two-part series previewing NSAC.

For more information about NSAC and a link to register, head to:

http://www.nationalsexualassaultconference.org/