FISA Foundation has released a new report describing its work with the Blackburn Center Against Domestic & Sexual Violence and Seton Hall University. A Case Study in Audacious Leadership shares the compelling story of how these two organizations in Greensburg, PA made a long-term commitment to change the culture in their community -- to recast expectations about gender, social roles, sex, consent, relationships and responsibility.
In 2007, well before the current media spotlight on campus sexual violence, Blackburn Center and Seton Hall asked FISA Foundation to support their goal of changing attitudes and behaviors of their college students. Over almost a decade, the STAR project (Social Transformation Through Awareness and Resolve) has grown to a university-wide prevention initiative. It ranges from bystander intervention training for students, faculty and staff to educating students about their rights and available services -- from updating the university’s residential policies to advocating for attention to root causes of sexual violence. Significantly, Blackburn Center and the university developed strategies to involve men, including athletes, in meaningful ways. Surveys of students as freshmen and again before graduation are showing positive attitudinal shifts as a result of classroom and campus-wide activities.
Blackburn Center is now working to engage other groups in the community using social media (its “Causes of Rape” post on Facebook went viral). It is partnering with area high schools to implement Coaching Boys into Men, an evidence-based violence prevention program, and organizing “Men as Allies” – men willing to act as ambassadors to traditionally male groups like sports leagues.
In this brief report, grantmakers will learn how modest investments, made consistently over a long period of time, can add up to real social progress. As executive director Kristy Trautmann writes, “This is how the world can be changed. It takes time, and some resources. But mostly what it takes is leadership and relationships and a long term commitment.”
Read A Case Study in Audacious Leadership.