Boys to Men’s RSVP (Reducing Sexism and Violence Program)
RSVP is a student-based, training-the-trainers violence prevention program that empowers students to effectively recognize, respond to and prevent violence and sexism.
About You
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Your idea
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2006
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Plot your innovation within the mosaic of solutions
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Culture/environment of conflict exposes and enlists young men in violence
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Create credible choices and opportunities
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
Unleash creativity that channels experiences of risk and vulnerability toward leadership
Name Your Project
Boys to Men’s RSVP (Reducing Sexism and Violence Program)
Describe Your Idea
RSVP is a student-based, training-the-trainers violence prevention program that empowers students to effectively recognize, respond to and prevent violence and sexism.
Innovation
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence.
RSVP is a student-based, training-the-trainers violence prevention program that empowers students to effectively recognize, respond to and prevent violence and sexism.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community?
As a school-based, youth-driven project, RSVP trains high school students of all genders, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes to be leaders in their schools by speaking out against abusive behaviors and attitudes, and by supporting those who have been victimized by them. RSVP teaches young men and young women to work together to enhance school climate by standing up against violence and its antecedents: sexism, gender stereotyping, homophobia, power and control. What’s more, the students carry-on the work of the program through educational projects with their peers, with middle school students and in the community where they live.
RSVP utilizes a combination of proven violence prevention models to engage students. RSVP trainers are certified by Northeastern University’s Mentors in Violence Prevention Program and use portions of their nationally recognized MVP Playbook to engage students in the work. RSVP has also incorporated portions of several media literacy curricula to educate students about the role that popular culture plays in reinforcing and perpetuating sexism and violence.
Describe how you organize and carry out your work?
RSVP works with schools in Southern Maine to obtain: administrative support for the program; establish institutional goals; establish a timeline for implementation of the twenty-hour curriculum; select staff to be school-based facilitators; select students to participate. The student selection process is critical as the group of 20-40 students must represent every group and click within the school- from overachievers to underachievers; those considered to be “cool” and “un-cool”. It is vital that every student in the school recognize him/herself in the RSVP leadership.
What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond?
After months of training, curriculum development and research, Boys to Men launched RSVP in the spring of 2007. We have developed a brochure (see attached) and are in the process of marketing the program to schools throughout Southern Maine. Our board has just approved a budget which includes the hiring of a program coordinator in March, 2008, to take on the responsibility of promoting RSVP and other B2M programs. Within the next year, we plan to be running two RSVP programs a semester, with the goal of growing to six a year in the second half of 2009.
B2M regularly receives inquiries from other states in the U.S. regarding franchise and replication. We are currently talking with a foundation about support to develop a business plan that would allow us to make all B2M programs and organizational information available to communities, individuals and organizations interested in establishing a similar program.
What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea?
Boys to Men has just recently received a grant from the Bingham Program to formally evaluate RSVP. Through a rigorous controlled study, we hope to establish RSVP as a best practice model for violence and sexism prevention. We are currently looking for funds to help promote the program in schools throughout Southern Maine. We have initial interest voiced by three schools, but funding is always an issue. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is considering whether or not to provide scholarship monies for schools interested in bringing RSVP to their communities. Without this sort of financial support, many communities will be denied access to the program. It costs Boys to Men approximately $3,000.00 to run RSVP in each school.
Impact
Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels.
RSVP changes the way young people see the world by giving them tools to and generating passion for opening their eyes and the eyes of others.
What impact has your work achieved to date?
“I will never see things the way I did before. RSVP has changed my life.” Neil C., age 16.
Neil eloquently sums up our greatest achievement: the creation of a program that successfully speaks to adolescent boys and girls and carefully opens them to the mediated messages and gender-biased world around them. Not only that, RSVP teaches young people the skills and innervates them with the passion and knowledge that they can change their communities and the world. RSVP starts the training with a two-day retreat. This element of the program makes a great difference in our success as it fosters bonding within the student group and allows them to create the vital support network necessary to begin challenging norms and values with school administrators, their peers and the community at-large.
Number of individuals served
Boys to Men has produced RSVP in one high school and is currently preparing to run it for a second time at Sanford High School. Twenty four students were trained at Sacopee Valley High School. While the student trainers are the initial beneficiaries of the program, ultimately the entire school, staff and students, are served as the new Youth Leaders begin designing and producing violence and sexism prevention programming. The Student Leaders at Sacopee Valley have already begun a school wide project to eliminate the use of sexist language (“bitch”, “whore” and “fag”) commonly used by the students and tolerated by the adults in the system. This is one of several programs they have identified as a priority project for the coming semester. These projects and more serve the entire student body of approximately 1800 middle and high school students.
Community impact
RSVP is designed to create community change by empowering students to take leadership roles in eliminating sexism and violence in their schools and local communities. Students who participate in RSVP are told at the outset that they have been selected for the program because they are seen as leaders within their peer groups and that they will be invited to leverage that status and their newly acquired RSVP tools and knowledge to change their communities. Not only that, for the program to be run, school administrations must commit to supporting the students to make the changes the students perceive as needing to be made. This is a very important but challenging tack for the school to take as it gives the students a degree of control and the supported autonomy they need to operate as legitimate agents for change. RSVP works with the students and the school administrators to ensure that, although potentially challenging, the students will be empowered to fulfill their leadership roles.
Society at large
Boys to Men is working to create a “critical mass” of educated young people throughout Maine to change cultural norms regarding society’s acceptance and condoning of interpersonal violence and sexism. Each RSVP is designed to change one community, and a generation of young people within that community, at a time.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why?
With the help of the Bingham Program, we will be able to strengthen our quantitative evaluation approach by employing experimental, pre-test/post-test design with a comparison school.
We will evaluate RSVP outcomes, paying attention to gender differences, including:
• change in levels of student knowledge and awareness;
• change in student attitudes and behavior concerning gender violence and ability to be an active bystander;
• overall student and faculty satisfaction with the RSVP.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication?
Initially, RSVP was funded by a $5,000 grant from the STRONG Fathers Network, a federally funded project run by the York County Community Action Program. This initial money allowed us to purchase training from Northeastern University’s MVP program, to purchase several media literacy programs and video resources from the Media Education Foundation to add to our curriculum.
Future financing will potentially come from several sources:
1. the schools themselves
2. community and family foundations
3. the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention who is considering the possibility of providing scholarship funds support to schools.
The STRONG Fathers Network has committed to supporting RSVP in one school a year in York County for the next four years.
Provide information on your current finances and organization:
Boys to Men’s annual budget for 2008 is $165,704.00. Annual revenue in 2007 was $146,434.51.
Sources of Revenue:
Corporate sponsorships- 22%
Grants/foundations- 21%
Individual donations- 25%
Public Sector support- .03%
Special Events- 12%
Programs- 19%
Interest- .004%
Number of Staff:
Executive Director- full time
Americorps Vista- Full time
Administrative Manager- Part time
Program Coordinator- half time (to be filled in March) and increasing to full time in 9/08
8 contract employees who run programs such as RSVP
25 volunteers
Who are your potential partners and allies?
Collaboration and partnership are key components of every program B2M establishes and participates in. We believe that bringing together representatives from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, boys and family members themselves, expands outreach capacity, offers diverse perspectives on community issues, strengthens our programs and shares resources. RSVP partners with local schools, Caring Unlimited (local DV agency) and members of the STRONG Fathers Network. Allies include MVP, parents, Safe and Drug-Free School Coordinators and students.
Who are your potential investors?
The schools and communities where RSVP is produced, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, private foundations and individual donors.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
B2M formed as a community-coalition in 1998 to produce a violence prevention conference. To date, we have produced seven conferences, each receiving extremely positive feedback from the hundreds of boys and adults who attend. B2M formally organized in 2004.
This collaborative-style of leadership continues as an organizational hallmark. We partner with departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics to produce a TV show called Raising B2M. We coordinate the Maine Boys Network, a coalition of representatives from Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin Colleges, the Mitchell Institute, Portland Schools and the University of Maine to support the academic achievement of boys. We partner with the Portland Schools to provide asset-building workshops. We produce a quarterly e-newsletter, and are collaborating with Hardy Girls to produce a statewide gender film festival on college campuses. Most importantly, boys' voices and leadership have always been central to our work. We run annual focus groups to make certain that boys remain an integral part of our program planning and to ensure we stay in touch with what they are experiencing and thinking.
Since our genesis, we’ve been asked by professionals to create a school-based program that is preventive in nature, positive in approach and engages boys in addressing and eliminating interpersonal violence and sexism. We conducted a thorough search through already existing programs. Finding some exceptional efforts, but not exactly what we were looking for, we combined components of MVP with some of our own media literacy training and the resources of the Media Education Foundation to design RSVP.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
I am a Social Worker and began with B2M in 1998. I worked for the Portland-Public-Health-Department for nine years running the Family Violence Prevention Programs. Completing Simmons College School of Social Work in 1984, I’ve since worked in the areas of substance abuse and family violence prevention at Tufts New England Medical Center, Harvard University’s Judge Baker Children’s Center and the Maine Medical Center. I teach part-time at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work and am the mother of two boys.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Brochure final.pdf | 1.51 MB |
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