A $300,000 grant is going to help researchers in London support sexual violence and harassment training projects for campus frontline workers.
The Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University announced Wednesday that it is getting the provincial money to help develop training for campus employees on how to handle reports of sexual harassment or violence.
“If someone has been sexually assaulted, they could conceivably disclose that information to anyone with whom they feel some kind of bond,” says CREVAWC Community Director Barb MacQuarrie. “The majority of people, given the uncomfortable nature of the subject, wouldn’t know how to handle that, so we want to prepare as many people as possible by teaching them how to be supportive and respond appropriately.”
MacQuarrie is leading the development of several online learning modules, which will use videos that depict the moment a disclosure of sexual violence occurs.
According to a release from CREVAWC, actors in the videos will initially show an inadequate, unsupportive and possibly harmful response. Then, a second depiction of the same scenario will show what is considered to be the proper response.
MacQuarrie hopes to have a dozen different scenarios filmed and online by September 2017.
“We’re at the very beginning of learning how to do this work well. Post-secondary institutions have lots of caring individuals, but they don’t have a long history of addressing this subject in an open and welcoming way,” says MacQuarrie. “This funding and this project are going to go a long way towards helping that change.”
The funding is part of a larger provincial investment of $1.7-million towards developing sexual violence and harassment training projects for frontline workers.
