Local schools have joined with the Howe Sound Women’s Centre, Crime Stoppers and other partners to produce short videos to prevent sexual assault.
Through the project, the students are in the director’s chair and have the chance to share their own ideas about prevention.
“We’re asking them to tell us what they think the solution is,” said Megan Reynolds, executive director of the Howe Sound Women’s Centre.
The project is the result of a $15,000 grant awarded to Sea to Sky Crime Stoppers from the provincial government, using funds from the Civil Forfeiture Office.
“Crime Stoppers actually reached out to us and a number of other community partners, and asked if we’d be interested in collaborating and discussing options around prevention of sexual assault,” Reynolds said.
The community’s Crime Stoppers group and the women’s centre partnered with others including the RCMP, Victims Services, Community Policing and the Sea to Sky School District.
“The concept for the project came as a result of a call for grants by the Minister of Justice, who was looking for an innovative approach to the prevention of violence against women,” Sea to Sky Crime Stoppers president Jeff Cooke said in a news release.
“We decided to focus our efforts on young people. This project gives voice to the issue of sexual assault and consent from a youth’s perspective, empowering them to share ideas on how to end sexual assaults before they happen.”
The partners applied for a grant in late 2014 and received approval last spring. Work on the project began in October, with the women’s centre’s Shannon Herdman, sexual assault and response prevention coordinator, and Sarah Manwaring-Jones, youth education facilitator, going into public and independent schools through the region to work with the students. Howe Sound Secondary and Coast Mountain Academy were among the schools they visited.
“They would go into schools and talk about the issue of sexual assault and the role of consent in preventing sexual assault…. Sometimes, they can be very difficult conversations,” Reynolds said.
The pair held discussions with students, primarily in Grade 11 and 12, about the teenagers’ experiences before the students would begin putting together the videos. The students typically worked in groups of three to five on short videos in the 30-second to four-minute range focussing on the role of affirmative consent in preventing sexual assault.
A group that includes the partners, teachers and two student representatives will choose the best videos after reviewing them on April 12. The plan is to submit the top three choices for the Reel Youth Film Festival in Vancouver.
They will also look at making the videos public either as a series or possibly by focussing on one video that could become the cornerstone of a campaign in the future.
“We definitely have some plans to share the videos,” Reynolds said, adding the videos could provide a model for other projects at the women’s centre. “We see this approach as being applicable to violence in relationships as well.”
