Powered by a high-talent, high-performing working group of faculty, staff, and students from across the province, and In collaboration with many system partners, BCcampus has developed a series of resources to help post-secondary institutions in B.C. create effective programs to prevent and respond to sexualized violence.
Post by the BCcampus editorial team
BCcampus has developed several resources to support post-secondary institutions in B.C. with the prevention of and response to sexualized violence on campuses. The goal of this project was to provide accessible prevention-and-response sexual violence training by creating openly licenced resources that can be adopted at any B.C. post-secondary institution.
We engaged a large working group with members from post-secondary institutions across B.C. over the past few years to develop and define the core guiding principles necessary to improve the quality of sexualized violence training. As a result, we created a resource to evaluate sexualized violence training in post-secondary institutions.
“Once we had developed the SVM Evaluation Toolkit, we used it to complete phase one: an environmental scan and evaluation of trainings available in B.C.,” explained Robynne Devine, project manager at BCcampus. “There are great training resources already available in the sector. We selected the trainings we used for our starting point because they best captured the core principles the working group identified early in the process.”
A sexualized violence and misconduct (SVM) working group analyzed the existing materials to develop four focus areas:
- Consent
- Response to disclosure
- Bystander intervention
- Accountability and Justice
Through the work done in phase one, we were able to identify trainings that addressed the four areas. One of these trainings was an emerging new training, Repairing Harm, developed by Meaghan Hagerty and Amber Huva. As a result of this project, the sector now has access to this training and facilitation guide, renamed Accountability and Repairing Relationships, to offer training for individuals who have done harm. Three other training and facilitation guides also resulted from this work:
“As the project manager,” said Robynne, “I considered multiple factors in the revision of the existing trainings to align with the core principles as much as possible. The development team included people to help with essential components, such as Indigenization and decolonization, gender inclusion, and cultural location. When you’re building a training resource for the B.C. post-secondary sector, it’s essential to include representation from a wide range of groups, such as international students, Indigenous learners, and those with lived experience. There isn’t a one-stop training resource that ticks all the boxes, but by evaluating everything through the lens of our guiding principles, we covered as much as possible.
“All of these trainings were developed with best-case scenarios in mind,” shared Robynne. “We recognize that not every institution has all the expertise on hand, so we focused on creating the facilitation guide to help institutions deliver the information in a safe and effective way.”
“Going into this project, I wanted to see the difference we could make rurally by providing resources and adequate support,” shared Tashia Kootenayoo, a member of the working group. “For me, it was about finding ways to bring the kind of support I’ve had access to, as a survivor, to rural areas, ensuring there is continuity throughout the process. Through this project, I learned how we can use more Indigenous and holistic methodologies to develop valuable resources. As well, I saw that when you have this many voices pulled together from different sectors, you can actually start to create effective change.”
Thank You
“A big thank-you to the development team who worked on these trainings to help us bring this intense and collaborative process to life,” said Robynne. “We would also like to thank Thompson Rivers University, the University of British Columbia — Okanagan, Simon Fraser University, and the Alma Mater Society Sexual Assault Support Centre for sharing their training resources to make this possible. And of course, none of this could have been done without the working group, who invested so much of their expertise and time into this project.
“This project challenged me in new ways,” shared Robynne. “I approached it with humility and vulnerability, and I learned so much by being involved in this project. It’s one of the things I love most about my job. I now have a much better understanding of trauma-informed practice and the importance of survivor-centred work. I am grateful to the frontline staff and workers who do this work, advocating for change and making our campuses safer.”
Open Educational Resource
Sexualized violence training and resources like BCcampus open textbooks are shared through a CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which means they can be shared and adapted, for free, with attribution to BCcampus. “In addition to being an open educational resource,” explained Tasnim Nathoo, a member of the development team, “the materials are adaptable to a wide range of audiences and formats. For example, facilitators can create a shorter version of a particular section and include it for student and staff orientation. Or they can use one of the optional activities to go deeper, creating opportunities for discussion and critical reflection or integrating the content into existing courses.”
What’s Next
Moving forward, the next item for this work is to develop asynchronous training. The current trainings can be facilitated synchronously face-to-face or online, but given current concerns such as the pandemic, the working group recognizes the need to bring this resource to an online, asynchronous model.
“We have great content now from the initial four trainings,” said Robynne, “so now we will reuse that content to develop asynchronous training that institutions will be able to incorporate into their learning management systems for faculty, staff, and students.”
Notable Quotes
“The way this project started is not how it ended up — there was a lot of room for discussion and compromise not only to ensure the work we were doing aligned with the Ministry’s expectations but also to make sure the people in the community of practice were satisfied with our work, recognizing that it did represent the ideals we intended to reflect. This was one of the projects where I felt most open with giving feedback, and to see that feedback reshape the original ideas was pretty incredible.”
— Tashia Kootenayoo
“When we started talking about developing training in this area, it became clear right away that we needed to think about creating resources that discuss the ‘how’ of delivering training and not just the ‘what.’ For example, how do we create safety? How do we create accessible training for learners of all backgrounds? How can we support folks in understanding connections between colonial violence and sexual violence? While it would be impossible to address everything, we hope that the facilitation guides that accompany each of the four trainings assist facilitators in identifying and including the current issues, needs, language, and perspectives of diverse groups within their institutions and communities.”
— Tasnim Nathoo
“There’s a high level of vulnerability for institutions to release their full trainings to be evaluated, especially around such an important topic like sexualized violence. We wouldn’t be at this point in the project without the full and open support and cooperation of the post-secondary institutions across B.C.”
— Robynne Devine, project manager, BCcampus
Learn More:
- Preventing and Responding to Sexual Violence – BCcampus
- B.C. Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act
The feature image for this post (viewable in the BCcampus News section at the bottom of our homepage) is by Johannes Plenio from Pexels
