The Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence: Dane County DELTA PROJECT

The project’s main over-arching focus is on identifying and eliminating some of the understood root causes that contribute to abusive behavior in young men. We seek to increase male involvement in the prevention movement while still getting at the heart of why gendered violence exists-tradition, privilege, and power. Ultimately we hope to support young men to define and embrace a new vision of manhood that is both empowering but also supportive of an equitable society, free of gendered violence.

Currently the project supports two main initiatives focused on working with men ages 13-22: Men Encouraging Non-Violent Strength (MENS) and Greek Men For Violence Prevention (GMVP).

Men Encouraging Non-Violent Strength (MENS) is a program that uncovers attitudes and behaviors associated with gender roles and expectations, communication, conflict resolution and healthy and less-healthy relationships. Each session takes 50 minutes, disscussion and activity based. We piloted the program at a couple of high schools.

Goals for the Men Encouraging Non-Violent Strength include:

• Promote an understanding of ways that traditional masculinity contributes to sexual assault and other forms of men’s violence, perpetuates gender inequity, and compromises the health of men and women.
• Build young men’s capacity to become peer leaders and allies with women in promotes gender equality and preventing men’s violence.
• To create a community of young men to provide support and accountability to one another around the very difficult work of addressing institutionalized sexism and male privilege.

This program seeks to increase student's awareness, challenge harmful norms, and to nurture the acceptance of attitudes and behaviors that support balance in dating relationships. We do not believe there is such a thing as a healthy relationship but we believe all relationships can become healthier. We believe that some relationships are unsafe and violent.

Our most promising MENS Program is at West High School. Our outreach to middle schools has grown in its success and efficacy. Originally it began as an attempt to let 8th graders know of a really exciting club to join their freshman year. We call it our ‘feeder school outreach’: get to the guys that will be coming into our school community. Since then, we have developed more partnerships with specific classes and feeder schools. We have primarily moved beyond one-time sessions and are now coming in on multiple occasions and, at some schools, getting access to have all the male students together for the MENS presentation. They offer interactive exercises and activities that intentionally and meaningfully engage the young men in the audience. The MENS participants facilitate without an adult although club leaders and the classroom teachers are in the room. It also helps to have MENS presenters that have younger siblings or younger friends in the room.

We have found that retention has come easier as we’ve included activities, events and fieldtrips outside of our regular club meeting time. These include semi-annual day long retreats, presenting or attending at overnight conferences or trainings, field trips to hear guest speakers that come into town, and our outreach to middle schools. We receive a lot of positive feedback from program participants about activities that allow them to try out a leadership role. Of course occasional free lunch never hurts to keep guys around either.

Regarding the MENS VIDEO . We originally created this video as a way to share some successes of the program with our 2006 CDC contract proposal. We interviewed three MENS members who participated at their alternative high school. In 2007, the LFA, Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, celebrated their 30th anniversary and used their event with guest Gloria Steinem as an opportune time to speak of the importance of prevention and the success of MENS. With support from a local videographer, we enhanced the video by adding in some thoughts of a MENS participant at West and having local sports celebrity Bo Ryan introduce the video. We believe the best evidence of MENS success is offered through participants own words.

If the video does not play, you can try to download a version of it HERE. If neither format works, please contact us.