Prevention Tips

The Prevention Tips provide quick, practical information on a variety of prevention tools and resources, plus WCSAP library materials.

WCSAP Webpage
February, 2013

Prevention requires building lasting, meaningful relationships with your community. The below list, taken from Community Building: What Makes It Work, describes some of the key skills required in facilitators.

Understanding the Community
Successful community building efforts tend to have organizers who have a thorough understanding of the culture, social structure, demographics, political structure, and issues in the community.
Sincerity…
Topic
  • Program Design
WCSAP Webpage
February, 2013

Tell a prevention story.

We are trying to prevent a social problem: sexual violence is epidemic. Since we are tackling such a large issue, our efforts can draw disagreements or resistance. It is easy to fall into the argument trap, and try to fight fire with fire. After all, if they only understood, how could they possibly disagree?

Statistics are a natural thing to reach for when justifying arguments or preparing presentations. For you and me, statistics might tell a rich…

Topic
  • Program Design
WCSAP Webpage
February, 2013

Sitting through a presentation or training can be difficult, but every now and then there is one that just works. You are excited, engaged, and alert! You care! You want to be there!

What separates the wheat from the chaff? What made that training matter to you? If it mattered to others in the room as well, it is very likely the trainer's methods were informed by understanding adult learning styles.

Adults have specific needs around learning. We want to know what is in it for…

Topic
  • Program Design
WCSAP Webpage
February, 2013

Sometimes we use a myths/facts approach in community education. Is it useful? Not really.

Take this example from a flyer from the Centers for Disease Control.

Myth:
The flu shot can cause the flu.
Fact:
The flu shot cannot cause the flu. Some people get a little soreness or redness where they get the shot.

Researchers read the flyer to people, and got some surprising results. Within 30 minutes, older people remembered about a…

Topic
  • Program Design
WCSAP Webpage
November, 2012

The bystander approach is a promising approach to sexual violence prevention as it encourages the community to take ownership of sexual violence as a problem and speak up when they witness potentially dangerous situations or sexist language. Other benefits of this approach include reducing victim blaming, includes everyone (gets men involved in a community issue, not a women's issue), and gives the community an opportunity it foster social change. Even so, it can be intimidating to become an…

Topic
  • Bystanders
With Cognitive or Developmental Disabilities
WCSAP Webpage
August, 2012

Healthy sexuality is an important component of preventing sexual violence. Therefore there are several resources that can be incorporated into prevention programs. We know that it is important to deliver prevention programming that is socio-culturally relevant and developmental appropriate. So when working with youth or adults with developmental or cognitive disabilities, finding resources that are tailored to this community may be helpful.

Here are three curricula that focus on…

Topic
  • Disability
  • CSA Prevention
  • Curriculums
  • Healthy Sexuality
To Prevent Gender-based Street Harassment
WCSAP Webpage
August, 2012

We've all heard the phrase "break the silence" and it has been an important part of raising awareness of sexual violence and giving survivors a chance to speak out. We must remember that if sexual violence occurs on a continuum then our prevention efforts must also. Taking a stand against gender-based street harassment is a good opportunity to reinforce the message that we are working to create social change and live in a world free of language, attitudes, and actions that support sexual…

Topic
  • Strategies
WCSAP Webpage
August, 2012

It's almost back to school time so let's really talk about what we can do to help protect youth from some of the dangers associated with sexting.

Let's Talk Data

Check out the report Interdisciplinary Responses to Youth Sexting: Recommendations from the Youth Online Safety Working Group (YOSWG), which synthesizes current research findings and gives recommendations to respond and prevent to sexting as…

Topic
  • Media Literacy & Technology
WCSAP Webpage
August, 2012

There's a lot of prevention work happening all over the place. There's lots of ways to get "plugged in" to find out what is being done out there.

Google News Alerts

Google News is constantly crawling the web to index and deliver news and blog posts. You can setup custom news alerts and get things delivered right to your inbox.

I suggest a couple generic phrases like "sexual violence prevention" and "sexual assault…

Topic
  • Media Literacy & Technology
WCSAP Webpage
March, 2012

Twitter is a social networking tool that allows people to share short messages instantly. Messages are called Tweets and must be equal to or less than 140 characters. You can easily share information and see what others share.

Read Twitter 101 to get started!

Using Twitter

It's up to each…

Topic
  • Media Literacy & Technology