2017 Annual Meeting

At the completion of this presentation, the participant will be able to:

1. Explain the shift in prevention practices meant to impact individual behaviors (1980s-2000s) to primary prevention strategies that address environmental conditions that allow for violence to occur in the first place (2005+);
2. Identify six interactive methods for communicating primary prevention theory and practices to organizational staff and community members; and
3. Experiment with primary prevention community engagement strategies that can be used to build networks to effectively collaborate to eliminate social problems like violence.

In this workshop we will “unpack” ICADV’s Prevention Toybox by describing the history, purpose and potential audiences for this violence prevention community engagement resource. Participants will be provided with information and resources to facilitate violence prevention project planning, community level violence prevention strategies, multi-sectoral partnerships and program evaluation.

As the prevention team at the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence began to explore prevention strategies at the higher levels of the social ecology we found that we needed more than words to communicate our ideas. Allegories, diagrams and discussion activities were invaluable to our process of making sense of prevention strategies with impact at the upper-levels of the social ecological model. Over time, these tools evolved into the games and discussion activities included in our Prevention Toybox, which we use to engage with audiences all over the world.

It is important to note that these games were not created for the purpose of educating potential victims about the dynamics of healthy and unhealthy relationships. Rather, target audiences are our own organizational staff members and community partners as we collaborate to re-conceptualize our prevention work beyond changing individual-level knowledge and attitudes to focusing on promoting safe, equitable and respectful community environments that deter multiple forms of violence.

The United States Navy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 180 other agencies in Indiana and across the United States have been trained to use these tools to prevent violence in their communities. The session will provide an overview of the six interactive prevention activities included in the toybox. Workshop members will have the opportunity to engage in one of the games, ask questions, learn about the results and order free materials to use with community members to prevent violence.