Local post secondaries offer new sexual violence prevention training

Two local post-secondary institutions in Prince George are offering new teachings to prevent and respond to sexual violence incidences in the community.

Both the College of New Caledonia and UNBC will be offering the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Training Program developed by BCcampus.

The program focuses on four different areas: consent and sexual violence, supporting survivors, accountability and repairing relationships, and active bystander intervention.

Each school will offer 90-minute training sessions either in person or online with short presentations and small group activities, practice scenarios, and tips on how to make the school community safer.

Amelia Kaiser, Director of Student Affairs at UNBC says the training will teach students how to understand consent in the context of day-to-day life.

“The interesting thing about consent is we often pigeonhole it into a romantic or sexual relationship context but consent is just something that respectful humans do in all of our relationships and in all of our interactions,” she explained.

She notes that it is particularly important for young adults to have access to this type of learning.

“We know that the age group that is particularly relevant for post-secondary so under 25 is more at risk of sexual violence, and we want to respond to that so we want to make sure that our students gain skills to be safe and be well in all sorts of situations,” Kaiser added.

Both schools are still determining exactly when the workshops will take place throughout the school year, as they continue to work out details of their academic schedules.

Meanwhile, Director of Student Services at CNC, Rafael De La Pena says this work will add to the training recently completed by faculty in the past year.

“We have been training already, we confirmed our new sexual misconduct policy back in September of 2020 and we did a round of training surrounding trauma-informed care, and how to conduct investigations,” he noted.

While details surrounding the workshops are still relatively unknown, both CNC and UNBC are planning to offer the program throughout the 2021-22 school year.