Abstract

Inviting Young People to Identify and Act on their Existing Commitment to Preventing Sexual Violence

Author(s)

Brendan FitzGerald -La Trobe University

Over the last two and a half years La Trobe University Counselling Service has been running a program to prevent violence to women.  It works with the general student population (rather than victim/survivors or perpetrators) and particularly with men with the intention of having them act as advocates against violence to women.  This is recognised as a highly effective preventative approach.  VicHealth research has identified that for women under 45 experiencing violence has a greater impact on their health than any other factor.

Understandably prevention of violence and particularly of sexual violence is important to our service but initial work in this project left us with responsibility for convincing or persuading students of this.  They were not engaged and sometimes in meetings advocated for tolerance to violent and abusive behaviour.  Since then we have invited small student communities to identify what commitments they already have to respectful relationships then supported the development of high quality health promotion resources that articulate these commitments.  This has engaged diverse student communities ranging from the football club to international students and resulted in a broadly based public commitment by them to preventing violence to women.

We believe that our approach extends existing social norms marketing approaches and may provide ideas about how to invite young people to act as public advocates in this and other health promotion areas.