SPECIAL SESSION: Community Readiness Model for Prevention of Sexual Violence on Campus in South Africa

Description/Overview: This session will showcase the research programme and related strategies for responding to sexual violence on campus. The Community participants will be introduced to Community Readiness Model to assess the stages of community readiness of a university campus for responding to sexual violence. The findings obtained from the assessment of the university campus as a community will be discussed. The strategies, including engaging male students as partners in the prevention of sexual violence on campus and the development of the first Campus Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) will be discussed. Participants will be introduced to the process used to develop the SART, the membership of Campus SART and critical factors to be considered when conducting research on sexual violence prevention with university students. The initial findings of the 2013 project that was conducted with both female and male student leaders as Key Informants revealed low levels of community readiness for prevention of sexual violence on campus. The levels ranged between “no awareness and vague awareness” of sexual violence as a problem on campus. This resulted in the design and implementation of specific educational workshops to heighten the level of readiness. Further historic events between November 2015 and March 2016, including the spate of sexual assault on and around campus and the university community demands on management to respond to sexual violence on campus resulted in the development of the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART). Development of the SART indicates that the university has achieved the stage of “Confirmation” on the Community Readiness Model. Ongoing research will take the university community to Professionalization. Engaging male student as key informants in the prevention of sexual violence on campus was conducted as a doctoral research programme. The analysed data and the developed model for prevention of sexual violence on campus will be discussed.