Advocacy Starts with Inclusive Education
According to state and national domestic violence and sexual violence coalitions, such as the National Advocate Credentialing Program, the average training for advocates who work with domestic and sexual violence survivors totals 40 hours. Mutual Ground, Inc. offers a 60-hour domestic and sexual violence training, which prepares participants to be victim advocates in hospitals and courtrooms, as crisis hotline responders, and in other roles.
Ultimately, the goal of an advocate is to empower clients. Within domestic violence and sexual violence prevention training, facilitators - or teachers of a training - play important roles by:
Providing culturally responsive trainings (CRT) within safe learning environments, and
Improving their culturally responsive training practices.
Providing culturally responsive instruction begins with understanding the students being educated. Understanding defining aspects of student identity - including race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, trauma, and cultural background - helps facilitators determine what students already know, think they know, and hope to learn. At the beginning of learning in schools, a common practice among classroom teachers is to provide students with an interest form that asks questions to determine how individual students identify and learn best. While this form is completed for classroom teachers to adjust assignments to match shared student learning styles and interests, professionals, especially those implementing professional development as facilitators, can adapt training curricula, content, or format to meet student learning goals using interest forms as well.
In a domestic violence and sexual violence training, making efforts to understand students can include facilitating intentional “ice-breaker” questions that help students learn about each other and share about themselves. It is important to review examples of appropriate responses to these questions so all students feel comfortable answering.
Once a facilitator understands their student population’s educational goals, they must establish a safe space that allows all students to voice their opinions. Without the promise of a non-judgmental space, conversations about sexual violence, domestic violence, or any nuanced topic may only include voices perpetuating the dominant narrative and culture.
A safe space should be established by maintaining expectations regarding safe communication among all students, including those whose experiences do not align with a dominant narrative or whose experiences have not been disclosed within the classroom. Lusa Lo, Professor of Special Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, establishes guidelines for a safe learning environment first with student-centered language that includes all student experiences, not just those comprising a common, dominant narrative (Lo, Edutopia, 2022). Such safe spaces can be established through participant guidelines created and agreed upon by students through verbal or written communication at a training’s start. Similar to a student interest form, students may be given the opportunity to provide critical information that impacts their participation in a training, thus determining their safety within the learning environment. This process can be done using online, anonymous interest forms, with personal student information compiled by a facilitator and utilized to democratize learning.
In a domestic violence and sexual violence training, establishing common guidelines may include students sharing their own experiences with domestic violence and sexual violence, either anonymously, to be managed by a facilitator, or aloud prior to learning. Safe educational spaces are moderated by facilitators who feel comfortable and confident naming inappropriate comments without shaming any student’s participation. This includes maintaining empathy for comments made in frustration. Ultimately, it is a facilitator's responsibility to maintain a safe learning environment for all students.
Even after understanding students and creating safe learning environments, facilitators are professionals who must maintain a strong, modern understanding of their discipline. It is important for professionals to continue enrolling in rigorous, challenging, and current training programs within their field so they may advocate for others to the best of their ability. Without this responsive education, advocates claiming to be victim-centered may not “see” their clients’ identifiers.
In a domestic violence and sexual violence setting, this ongoing education can include consistent enrollment in professional development seminars and trainings analyzing research regarding laws and policies that affect client advocacy; facilitating domestic violence and sexual violence trainings with gender-neutral language when referencing victims, survivors, abusers, and perpetrators; refusing to advocate for violence, hatred, or misfortune toward any oppressor; and advocating for global, universal human rights standards in which all identities are respected, regardless of popularity.
Written by Shalini Jasti
Prevention Educator at Mutual Ground
