Women Helping Women

215 E. 9th Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Prevent and Empower Learning Management System P)latform

The Prevent & Empower program for ages 7th to 12th grade has seen exponential growth in the 2022-2023 academic year, and is trending in the same direction for the 2023-2024 school year. In 2023 alone, the program served over 5,000 youth. We also were able to showcase the efficacy of the program to the local media, by having educators and the CPS superintendent join us on air to discuss the program, and the impact they have seen in the classroom.

As part of our Programmatic Growth Campaign, Rise Beyond Violence, Women Helping Women has committed to education 25,000 students by the end of the 2026 school year. This is only possible with structured expansion, supported by the funding from the Dater Foundation. While the current emphasis of our Prevent & Empower program is reaching full saturation in CPS (Cincinnati Public) schools, we continue to maintain our presence across all of the schools in Butler County, and explore the options for the programs expansion into our other service counties.

It is important to note that the decision to fully saturate CPS schools comes based on our knowledge of the need for intervention services in those areas. For example, the number of DVERT runs that overlap X CPS school is higher than some private or Catholic schools.

It is also important to highlight that the Prevent & Empower program is present in public, private, and parochial schools across Hamilton and Butler county.

We know that we can continue to rapid, sight-on-scene response in the community for years, but only through the prevention of violence will we begin to see a cultural shift around the ability to end gender-based violence once and for all.

As a result of the funding from Dater and other partners, we have been able to support the growth of our team. Now, we have 6 full time prevention educators, a prevention manager, and for the first time in the history of Women Helping Women, we have hired a Vice President of Prevention to carry out the mission of prevention. This team, and it's capacity, are much better suited to meet the needs of the community, and educate broadly on the principles we feature in the program.

The program features 5-day curriculum on bystander intervention, consent, healthy relationships, and more. By creating safe spaces for dialogue, students are able to not only ask questions that have been on their mind for some time, but are given a safe space to report violence earlier on.

The ultimate goal through the Prevent and Empower program is to support and improve social and emotional skills and resilience through evidence-based prevention programming. This is through not only expanding capacity, but deepening programming as well.

After completing the Prevent and Empower program, 96% report feeling confident in identifying signs of healthy/unhealthy relationships. 85% of students feel confident using bystander intervention strategies to intervene in potentially harmful situations. 90% of students feel confident setting boundaries with a dating partner.

The continued goal is to increase these percentages, building comfortability for students in setting their own boundaries, building healthy relationships for themselves, and intervening when they notice something is wrong.

The growth of the program has allowed us to exceed our goals for 2023 and 2024 for number of students educated - as a result, we are reviewing our internal goals to newly define our numerical goals for the coming years.

The technological component of the Prevent & Empower program has always been a barrier. In the latter half of 2023, we have fully trained staff on the use of EmpowerDB - our intervention database - to ensure the proper collection and retention of data for the Prevention Team. This not only occurs with members of the Prevention staff, but also with the Grants and Outcomes Compliance Manager, to ensure the efficacy of data for reporting processes.

The Prevention team continues to use Survey Monkey with students, and is exercising new ways to collect information more succintly from participants in the program.

As part of our contract with the Ohio Department of Health, educators also participate in Community Education tool building and facilitation. One educator is responsible for a monthly agency podcast, featuring topics on prevention. This podcast is called "Calling Attention to Prevention," and has featured guests from local partners, like Strategies to End Homelessness and 1N5. Another educator is responsible for creating educational content for social media, including recent examples of graphics on the Romeo and Juliet Law, Bystander Intervention, and Consent. These requirements allow the team to exercise their creativity in how to best educate folks who only share space with Women Helping Women for a few minutes at a time.

Finally, the future of the Prevent & Empower program includes continued sustained expansion, first in Hamilton county amidst CPS schools, and then in our other service counties - collaborating with partners anywhere possible. It is our goal to maintain or exceed our metrics in students reviews of the program - continuing to see increase in student's confidence identifying healthy relationships, intervening in situations before they escalate, and setting healthy boundaries.



Website: http://www.womenhelpingwomen.org
Amount: $25,000
Date: July 2023