At ICADV we know that violence is preventable, and every day we are working towards our vision of a world where all intimate relationships are non-violent and equitable. While want to eliminate violence, and we also want to promote safe, supported, and respectful relationships. We work for equity, across identities and multiple types of relationships, to ensure that our physical safety and emotional wellbeing are respected in our intimate relationships. We are working to make safe and respectful relationship behavior the easy and expected choice.
With our prevention strategies, we start from the idea that what surrounds us, shapes us. We know from public health that our life experiences and the behaviors that we see modeled around us typically have a stronger influence on our behavior than facts and information that we have about a particular issue.
This means that we can’t solve the problem of violence by educating people abusive behaviors and telling them not to engage in them – because behavior is not driven by facts alone. To be effective, we have to address the cultural conditions that give people permission to exercise power over others, and also the motivations that increase the likelihood that some of us will make that choice. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold individuals accountable for the harms that they abuse; it just means that in the long-run, we will be most effective at preventing violence when we change the cultural context that enables it.
We believe that three key societal conditions have to be met in order to accomplish our vision where all relationships are respectful and free from violence. It breaks down like this:
Respectful relationship behaviors is the easy desirable choice.
We believe we have to make respectful relationship behavior the easy and expected choice in all of our relationships. This requires a lot of modeling of positive relationships and respectful relationship skills. Where people consistently see and experience great relationships, they will have increased relationship skills, and we’ll also establish a cultural norm that respectful relationships behavior is our shared expectation.
Abuse is not an option that someone feels they need to choose.
We need to create societal conditions where abuse is not an option that people feel the need to choose. We believe that where all of us feel included and valued in our communities, we will feel little motivation to behave in abusive ways. We do this by working for opportunity for all members of our communities, meeting their basic needs, advocating for strong education systems, and changing public policies to support families.
Abuse is not an easily available option for someone to choose.
We are working to ensure that abuse is not an easy choice for individuals to make. We believe that where community members are connected and engaged, social accountability is increased. A shared sense of community accountability requires us to challenge privacy norms around relationships and requires us to both proactively check in with the people in our community about how their relationships are going, and also to consistently hold one another accountable for disrespectful behavior in order to demonstrate that abuse simply does not work within our community. We also work to create community systems that support connections and engagement among residents in order to promote and support community accountability.
The work to promote respectful community environments that deter multiple forms of violence creates lots of opportunities for action. While we have unlimited passion for this work, we are often limited in the resources needed to complete all of it, all of the time. Therefore, we try to make careful decisions about the prevention strategies we choose to take on, in order to maximize our impact. Our commitment to preventing violence requires us to be disciplined and strategic in the actions that we take. ICADV created the E4 Framework to help us assess proposed prevention strategies to ensure that they’re the best ones for moving us towards our vision.
Does this strategy center the leadership, needs, interests and strengths of traditionally underserved populations? Have the people most impacted by the problem had the lead in defining the problem and solutions? It is unlikely that efforts to retrofit prevention strategies developed by/for mainstream populations with the hope of expanding the reach or relevance to communities that have been marginalized will be effective. When the benefits/protections of prevention strategies fail to support communities that have been marginalized we contribute to the inequities in health and safety between advantaged and disadvantaged populations.
Has the community helped to define the problem so that we know what types of solutions make sense? When choosing a strategy, what evidence makes us believe that this strategy will work? Research, practice-based and community-based knowledge are each valid forms of evidence in making this determination.
Does this strategy seek to reduce or eliminate risk factors in the community, or does it require vulnerable individuals to navigate those risks? Rather than relying on vulnerable populations to change their behavior to try to safely navigate risks, we believe that it is the responsibility of the broader community to work to reduce those risks in order to make respectful behavior the easy and expected choice for all of us. This does not mean that members of traditionally marginalized communities shouldn’t lead these efforts; rather, privileged individuals, programs and systems should work in collaboration with diverse leaders to reduce risks and to ensure that opportunities to safely thrive are available for all community members.
Does this strategy have the potential to impact broad populations and/or multiple social problems? With consideration of our limited resources and the overlap in risk and protective factors between multiple social problems, it is in our strategic interest to maximize our impact by working at the intersections.
We believe that teen dating abuse is preventable! If you are worried about your teen’s relationships, or if you’re just looking for ways to talk with them about the respectful relationship behaviors that they deserve, please visit the Stand 4 Respect website. You will find information and tips that can help you have great conversations with the teens in your life about safe and respectful relationships. You can also watch videos created by the ICADV Youth Council, explaining elements of respectful relationships and illustrating good (and bad) times to talk with teens.
Please email Brooklyn Arizmendi at barizmendi@icadvinc.org with any questions.
If you have concerns about your relationship or a friend’s relationship, we recommend you visit Love is Respect. You will find information about consent and healthy relationships, and you can take quizzes that help you decide if you are a good partner or in a healthy relationship. You can also chat with an advocate online, text loveis to 22522, or call 1.866.331.9474 (TTY 1.866.331.8453).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified creating protective environments, with particular focus on improving school climate and safety, as effective strategies for preventing teen dating violence and intimate partner violence. ICADV and the Domestic Violence Network have created this Best Practice Template for the Prevention of Teen Dating Abuse and Sexual Harassment, adopted by the Indiana Department of Education. The policy centers on promoting a safe and supported school environment to prevent multiple forms of abuse and to stimulate academic success among all students.
We all play a role in preventing violence by creating environments where all people have the opportunity to thrive in safe relationships — where respect is the easy and expected choice.
ICADV’s DELTA AHEAD and Prevention Teams have created a toolkit for directors of organizations that are looking to begin their prevention journey.
Take a look at the Directors’ Toolkit. This tool includes resources to help directors build and maintain their prevention program including: examples of prevention strategies, sample job descriptions, data sources, and funding sources.
We believe that Small Moments can make a Big Difference.
That’s why we created the Small Moments campaign. Here, you can learn what communities around Indiana are doing to take action to prevent violence by promoting safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments.
ICADV released its Prevention Storybook in 2019 to explain ICADV’s vision for a violence-free Indiana and how we can prevent violence in our communities. To fix a problem, you must first understand it and this booklet is the beginning to understanding how we can positively impact our communities so that everyone can grow in safe, stable and nurturing environments. The storybook is also a coloring book, so you can bring your own ideas and creativity to the prevention space!
The Prevention Storybook was created in 2019 with support from the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Family and Youth Services Bureau, and the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.
ICADV is excited to share the 2024 Centering: African American & Black Women & Girls in Indiana Report. In Indiana and across the nation, Black women and girls disproportionately experience a wide range of negative public health and safety outcomes. ICADV listened to Black women and girls from across the state to identify their priority needs for health and safety in their communities. Please reach out to Timike Jones at tjones@icadvinc.org with any questions about this report.
ICADV is thrilled to share our Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention with you. This booklet provides an overview of our understanding of the problem of violence, our prevention framework, and examples of community-level prevention strategies we’ve undertaken with partners over the past several years, in an approachable and interactive format.
ICADV’s Prevention Toybox helps us to re-conceptualize our prevention work beyond changing individual-level knowledge and attitudes to focusing on promoting safe, fair, and respectful community environments that deter multiple forms of violence. Created originally in 2016, the games continue to be helpful in our work to communicate complex primary prevention concepts with a range of allies and partners.
The ICADV Treasure Map was informed by listening sessions with teens across the state. To create the conditions that help kids thrive, everyone needs to be on the same path. Parents, siblings, colleagues, teachers, mentors, extended family, partners, employers, legislators, neighbors, faith leaders — everyone in Indiana can act, to move all of us toward safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments.
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