Whenever I’m working with individuals or organizations, I love to learn their origin stories. There’s so much we can learn from how we began. It can teach us how we got to where we are and it can also help us to understand where we need to go and what may be getting in our way of growth and evolution.

Many rape crisis centers (RCCs) and domestic violence (DV) organizations were founded to address the very real crisis of gender based violence. Many began as volunteer-run organizations and started services like hotlines or safe houses to provide much needed support and safety. If you look at the state-level funding for RCCs and DV organizations, the vast majority- historically and currently- funds crisis response and direct services. Many of the directors and executive directors of these organizations have worked their way up the ranks and have spent years providing these life-saving services themselves.

As a whole, the RCC and DV movement has been largely focused on response. So when organizations began to expand to include positions such as “Prevention coordinator” or “Youth Education Specialist” the same framework used for response services was often applied. Knowing that so many people are suffering and in need of services, prevention programming was aimed at reaching as many people as possible, to ensure that at least one person could be connected to the organization that could help save their life. When I first started working in this field, the state funding that was available to support prevention work evaluated the success of a program based on the number of participants; the higher the number of people you reached, the more money you could receive. This meant that many of us were racing around the state, trying to do as many one-off presentations as we could. We would quickly disseminate information about the problem (definitions, statistics, maybe a story or two) and then talk about the resources our organizations provided.

This is not prevention work. This is awareness raising. It will increase peoples’ awareness of the problem and of the resources available. It is not the solution to addressing the root of that problem or to create meaningful change. Awareness raising is necessary and powerful and it can also have unintended consequences. One of those consequences that I still see today is that when organizations have a one person department who is trying to speak to as many participants as possible, the calls for services increase. The direct services teams are already stretched thin- now they have more calls than they can handle. The prevention staff member is then recruited to split their time between presentations to the community and answering crisis calls, working at the shelter, and/or carrying a caseload of clients. 

This reinforces the prevention staff member’s inability to do deeper and more intensive work in the community. It also takes a toll. Running to presentations and parachuting in to deliver information that is deeply impactful but not having the opportunity to build relationships in that community can feel transactional, it can deplete energy. Being able to develop partnerships and work with a group over time can feel transformational and increase motivation and energy- for the individual and the community. But it requires an investment. If we keep applying a response paradigm to prevention work, it will continue to be a challenge to prioritize prevention. We will continue to see preventionists arrive with great excitement and energy only to leave those positions within 1-2 years. These positions do not have to be revolving doors. It is possible to create sustainable prevention programs and meaningful change in the communities we serve. To do this, we need to invest and we need to apply a strategy and framework specific to prevention. And if we can do this, not only will we have a more sustainable internal structure, we will build deeper connections in the community that can invest in the organization.

A prevention paradigm focuses on building skills and intrinsic motivation. To do this, we need to work with smaller groups of people over longer periods of time. We need to recruit ambassadors to our work, who can become skilled facilitators and bring this conversation into the places and spaces where we do not have access. If we invest in a prevention strategy and structure, we will support individuals and communities to develop the capacity to recognize, respond to, and prevent gender-based violence. Rather than feed a dynamic where community members are reliant on the services our organizations provide, we can do deep and transformational work with individuals and communities that allows them to do this work within their roles and relationships. It will, over time, increase the sustainability not only of our prevention teams but of our direct service teams, as well. 

At JT Consulting we love to provide trainings on prevention, and we also work with organizations to evaluate their prevention strategy and lead strategic planning for prevention programs. We would love to partner with you to support the sustainability of your organization and increase the capacity of your prevention team. Reach out and schedule a call today!