End Relationship and Sexual Abuse

Consent is an agreement between participants to engage in sexual activity. There are many ways to give consent  Consent doesn’t have to be verbal, but verbally agreeing to different sexual activities can help both you and your partner respect each other’s boundaries.

We can’t just leave it to teens and young adults to understand and practically apply the concepts of consent. We need the adults in the lives of young people to demonstrate understanding of this concept as well. One specific group of adults that can be very influential in a young person’s development of consensual activity is parents – talk to your children about consent. This article, published by the Good Men Project, has great information and tips to teaching kids consent, ages 1-21.

Also, Wellspring produced a brief video which highlights the reasons why this conversation is so important to do with young people entering into college.

I would like to schedule a training to learn more.

The CDC also states that a strategy to end relationship and sexual abuse is to promote social norms that protect against violence. One way to do this is through bystander intervention.

Bystander intervention is recognizing a potentially harmful situation or interaction and choosing to respond in a way that could positively influence the outcome.

There are a few ways to intervene:

• Direct – confronting a situation head-on
• Distract – Taking the focus away from a situation
• Delegate – Enlisting the help of others

This intervention can happen at anytime. You don’t always have to intervene while something is happening to make a difference.

We created a video for rising high school graduates to help them get started on solid ground when they get to college.

Meet KESHI! KESHI is here to talk about what social norms are, and how challenging them sometimes can be a good thing. This video can be a great conversation starter for parents to talk to teens and young adults who are joining new communities or for teens and young adults to watch for themselves.

KESHI’s goal:
Keeping
Everyone
Safe
Healthy and
Informed

This video is the latest piece in our work to help change the way society thinks about issues like relationship and sexual abuse. This video focuses on ‘social norms,’ and how challenging them can help keep people safe. We use this video in local high schools and college campuses as part of our social change and prevention programs.

Other organization websites that may be of interest:

• RAINN: Your Role in Preventing Sexual Assault
• NO MORE: Bystander Basics

I would like to schedule a training to learn more.