Preparing Sexual Violence Prevention Education for an Uncertain Fall

At our recent Virtual Water Cooler (VWC), we shared what Soteria is learning and doing as well as our next steps. We also had a conversation about the questions that are on your minds and ideas for what we should keep in mind as we develop materials. 

 What We’ve Been Doing

 In April, we held VWCs every Friday through which we learned a lot from you and shared some of what we know from research and practice. We have shared blog posts based on these VWCs here including on:

 We also developed a free Bystander Intervention Toolkit with social media images relevant to our current reality with physical distancing. The toolkit and corresponding images are available to anyone to download. You can also access the files to customize the images further. We've started to hear about your creative ideas for customizing the images, including videos and adding logos. We'd love to see what you come up with so send your adaptations our way at info@soteriasolutions.org and be sure to tag us on social media @SoteriaSol.

 We also held our first BITB College Prevention Program Virtual Train-the-Trainer Workshop, which proved to us that we could successfully adapt our train-the-trainer workshops to an online format. Our first BITB High School Prevention Virtual Training will be August 13-14, 2020. We will hold another BITB College Prevention Virtual Training in September. Click here for more info on both programs.

 All of these processes have involved listening and learning alongside our colleagues who implement Bringing in the Bystander® in their communities through VWCs, conversations, engagement on the listserv, attending spaces convened by other organizations, and a survey. We’ve also been reviewing the best available evidence related to online learning, cognitive load, and trauma-informed approaches to prevention. We know too that this situation is evolving and that there is a lot of uncertainty that we are all facing. 

What’s Next

 As always, we are striving to balance innovating to the current reality and support you with ensuring that we are being thoughtful and rooted in the best available evidence. Below are some of the steps we are currently taking and what is coming up next, or you can watch a video with this information here. 

  • We are developing guidance on delivery of BITB in the COVID-19 reality. As such, we will be amending BITB licenses to allow for synchronous (livestream) implementation. We have developed and are piloting guidance for delivering BITB College via livestream (such as through Zoom). We will release the BITB College guidance in late July and will host another VWC on Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 1pm to walk you through it. We are working on similar guidance for BITB High School and are aiming to release it in August. 

  • We know that BITB is an interactive program designed to be facilitated live and that there is also a current need for asynchronous content from which students can learn at their convenience. Therefore, we are developing a brief, self-navigated online module based on the core tenets of BITB College. We will provide more information soon.

  • We are partnering with Prevention Innovations Research Center at the University of New Hampshire and Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association to conduct research on sexual and relationship violence and stalking prevention education during COVID-19. We will share more soon and hope you will participate.

 We continue to learn from and engage with others who are navigating this reality and look forward to maintaining those connections. For up-to-date information on what we are doing to respond to COVID-19 as well as our most recent blog posts and resources, check out our COVID-19 Resources Page.

Jennifer ScraffordCOVID-19