215 E. 9th St. #7
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Youth Gender-Based Violence Prevention Education
Women Helping Women’s (WHW) mission is to prevent gender-based violence and empower all survivors, and WHW believes all members of the community can live in a world of equality, health, and vitality.
WHW has served survivors of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking since 1973. The Dater Foundation’s grant supported WHW’s youth prevention programs, empowering community members, including youth, to be change agents. Programs initiate systems-wide understanding and response in the community to promote healthy relationships, recognize signs of abuse, build empathy for survivors, and disrupt harm to prevent violence from initially occurring.
During the 2019-20 academic year, WHW taught 2,900 students at 27 schools across Hamilton and Butler counties. According to retrospective evaluation results, WHW saw a 180% increase in students’ confidence for identifying healthy relationship characteristics, a 79% increase in confidence for preventing sexual violence, and a 119% increase in confidence for bystander intervention.
The team trained coaches from North College Hill, Cincinnati Public Schools, Mason City Schools, and Anderson Township in Coaching Boys Into Men and Athletes as Leaders, teaching adults to have conversations with athletes about respect, healthy communication and relationships, setting boundaries, and upstander behavior. To create large-scale cultural change toward violence prevention, WHW also focused on utilizing social marketing strategies, like social media, to create shifts in social norms. During the reporting period, WHW saw 6,390 likes on Instagram, 402 likes on Twitter, and reached an average of 749 people on Facebook per post. The team sought to help Greater Cincinnati be action-oriented toward preventing gender-based violence.
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