WMCI students help spread awareness about abuse

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Published on Friday, July 4, 2014

By: Kate Jackman-Atkinson

myWestman.ca

On June 10, students from William Morton Collegiate Institute saw the end result of their work on a video to increase awareness about abuse in relationships.  The project was overseen by the Portage Family Abuse Prevention Centre and involved 11 students.

Joyce Schrader, the Portage Family Abuse Prevention Centre’s executive director, explains that the project began two years ago when the centre received a grant to identify gaps and barriers to reducing violence against women and girls, especially in rural areas.

The centre conducted focus groups and one on one counselling but Schrader said that they wanted to do more. “Themes that emerged were awareness, especially among youth, about what healthy relationships are like,” she said. 

She called this knowledge an important life skill, one that many older women said they wish they had learned at a younger age. The centre began by hosting workshops and training seminars about healthy relationships at area schools. In total they have held 25 Healthy Relationships workshops that reached a total of 429 attendees.

Most of the attendees were between the ages of 12-18, and a few of the smaller workshops were for ages 20-45. Overall, there were more females than males although a couple of workshops were made up entirely of male participants.

To help get the message across to youth, students at WMCI who had taken the workshop helped to make a video. The video combines the lyrics of the song Surprise Yourself, by Canadian recording artists Keith and Renee, and messages developed by the students.  The video was produced and directed by Jeremy Johnson.

“As soon as we heard about this project we knew we wanted to get involved, it is such a modern approach to a very important issue,” says Keith Macpherson of Keith and Renee.

Schrader said that the project has been well supported and that Johnson embraced the idea and kept the message true to what the students had developed.

The formal video viewing took place on June 10.

“I was so excited and proud of them,” said Schrader. She hopes that the message will be relevant to youth.  “It was created by youth, for youth.  They won’t want us to tell them what message to show,” she said.

With the project done, Schrader hopes that the video will have a lasting legacy. “I hope the legacy is that youth will see the video and recognize that there’s good information out there... That they are good enough to have a healthy relationship,” she said.

The video also has the potential to impact youth across the country.  Schrader said that Red Cross has contacted her about using clips of the video in their course, RespectED, that focuses on violence and abuse prevention.

The video can be seen on the Harmony Project’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/HarmonyProjectPLP/videos.

In photo: WMCI students, producer Jeremy Johnson, crew members, WMCI principal Shannon Blondeau, Healthy Relationship Co-ordinator at PFAPC Tracy Pliszka and PFAPC executive director Joyce Schrader posed for a photo at the video release party.

Photo submitted