Sudbury-Wayland-Lincoln Domestic Violence Roundtable to Present a Program on Peer Violence Prevention

The Sudbury-Wayland-Lincoln Domestic Violence Roundtable will kick off 2017 with a program entitled “Building Upstanders: What Violence Prevention Strategies are Working in Local High Schools.”  Led by a panel of student members of the Mentors in Violence Prevention Programs at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School and Wayland High School, the students will share their experiences in teaching their peers ways of identifying warning signs of abuse, preventing their peers from participating in abusive relationships, and promoting respectful interventions in their schools. The students’ goal is to create more “upstanders” against abusive behaviors.

This program will be held at 3 PM on January 10, 2017, in the Community Meeting Room of the Wayland Public Safety Building. The program is free and open to the public and is appropriate for students and adults interested in preventing abusive relationships among teens and young adults.

The Mentors in Violence Prevention is a program of Northeastern University Center for Sport in Society. The MVP program has four goals: to raise awareness, challenge thinking, open dialogue, and empower leadership.

At Lincoln-Sudbury the MVP program has 8 trained staff and 40 trained 10th-12th grade student leaders. The members plan assemblies and programs for LS students including an annual Courage to Care healthy relationship day and White Ribbon Day programming.  Students also visit Middle Schools to talk about healthy relationships and being an upstander. 

At Wayland High School MVP members took initiative in showing the film Escalation to seniors last spring.  Escalation is a video exploring the prevention of relationship violence and is promoted through the One Love and Lauren Dunne Astley Memorial foundations.  The responses of parents and students were very positive and plans are being considered to show the film to seniors earlier this year so there can more exploration of the issues and work on violence prevention in dating relationships.

 

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