Victims and Survivors of Crime Week - May 12 to 18, 2024

Victims and Survivors of Crime week was May 12 to 18 this year. We are honoured to showcase the ways we utilized this week to raise awareness of crime and its impact in our community, specifically when it comes to family violence. Our two Education Specialists, Sarah and Dinah, hosted a number of workshops at schools, with the public, and community partners. And thanks to incredibly generous funding from Victims and Survivors of Crime Week, we were able to print a number of resources for youth on healthy relationships and develop some items they are able to take home with them, reflect on, and showcase their understanding on healthy relationships with!

With Victims and Survivors of Crime Week, the focus is on prevention and awareness of crime. Family violence is a crime that affects many individuals. Preventing it begins young and it begins with an understanding of what healthy relationships look like and how everyone is involved in making their relationships healthy together. One of our Education Specialists, Sarah has been hosting healthy relationships workshops for Jr. and Sr. High aged children for a couple of months now. During her workshops, Sarah demonstrates skills present in healthy relationships, leads interactive activities to encourage engagement, and provides resources for youth to maintain and build healthy relationships throughout their lives. Sarah teaches about respect, boundaries, trust, communication, and more, and engages kids in age-appropriate learning that is engaging and memorable.

Back in February of 2024, Sarah hosted a healthy relationships workshop with a few senior high students who were members of the Student Solidarity Committee at Lillian Osborne High School in Edmonton, AB. In turn, students apart of the committee were encouraged to take the initiative on leading a workshop for their peers, running the activities, and sharing the information themselves. We sat down with a few of those students to ask them what they learned, how it impacted them, what they took away from the workshop, what they enjoyed, and how they will use the information they learned moving forward. Below are some of their answers!

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What piece of information from the workshop was most valuable to you?

1. The most important piece of information that I learned was to understand that, although it sounds like a no-brainer to leave an unhealthy relationship, there are several different factors that cause or force someone to stay. Such as not knowing it is unhealthy due to how someone grew up, it being too dangerous to leave, etc. I noticed that even though I felt I would not tolerate certain things in a relationship and that I could identify immediate red flags, other factors or different sides to the story went over my head that I didn’t acknowledge until I had open conversations about the different responses to certain situations that were presented at the workshop.

2. The information that was most valuable to me was the cycle of abuse. Societal stigma typically conveys abusive relationships as something that is easy to break. Think: “Obviously they know when a relationship is abusive right?!” However, the cycle actively disproves that fact. The four stages (Tension, Incident, Reconciliation, and Honeymoon) speaks volumes to how abuse can be easily overlooked as simply ‘ups and downs’ in a relationship. Breaking-- or simply noticing-- the pattern is extremely difficult, as one can be blindsided by the honeymoon phase. It is beneficial to know that this cycle exists, and how to identify it, as to prevent abuse from happening to ourselves and other important figures in our lives.

What benefits are there to learning about healthy relationships?

1. Learning about healthy relationships allows you to be more aware of both toxic and healthy habits in your relationships, whether that is with friends, families, or your partner. You may notice some things that you do or other people do in your relationships that might lead to unhealthy habits or issues down the road, and you can take away some things you or other people could do to improve. It can also help you help other people and their relationships - for example, when someone opens up to you about any problems they are experiencing, you can use the lessons you learned from workshops, such as the one provided by The Today Center, to talk to them, share insightful information, and come up with next steps to improve or solve the issue. 

2. I think that learning about healthy relationships is important in order to make sure that no one feels bad about not leaving a relationship which is not healthy or responding assertively to an unhealthy behaviour. Oftentimes, when one is involved in an unhealthy relationship, it can be really hard to take a step back and see the extent to which a relationship is problematic as others might be able to. However, learning about different strategies, such as predetermining one’s limits before a certain situation even happens (boundaries), can help to combat this, which is very valuable.

3. First of all it gives you a better understanding of the relationships you are in and how healthy they are. Being able to recognize certain traits or characteristics in your relationships can help you maintain a healthy and safe relationship for both you and the others you’re involved with, whether it’s a romantic relationship or other. It also puts you in a position to recognize unhealthy relationships around you. This is also beneficial because you can first of all, recognize a dangerous or potentially dangerous situation and secondly, seek out help or provide support if you’re in a position to do so.

what activity, lead by sarah, was your favourite?

1. My favourite activity was the spectrum game we played where everyone got up and walked to different sides of the room based on their opinions on the question asked. I think it was a good way to change up the pace and have a little variety in the workshop as a whole. It was also nice to just be able to get up after a period of sitting and stretch my legs.

2. My favorite activity was the ‘compromise or deal breaker’ activity (red light, yellow light, green light). It was interesting to see the extent of how different individuals would stay in a relationship despite questionable actions being presented. It was especially captivating to see undertones of how gender identity impacted our values (I remember one student brought up a great point when we got presented with the question “How would you react if your partner pushes you hard during an argument?” and it was all deal breakers across the board for fem girlies. Meanwhile, the only individuals who said it was a compromise were the masc. guys). Personally, this activity opened my eyes to more perspectives in identifying whether an action was toxic.

Are there any changes you have noticed in yourselves or your peers in regards to their relationships that were put into practice because of their learning from the workshop?

1. Personally, I have become a lot more aware and conscious of how I interact with my friends and classmates now. I sometimes catch myself exhibiting behaviours that were introduced during the workshop, especially over text. Not only that, I can now easily recognize toxic or unhealthy conversations between myself and someone else, and more often than now, I end up correcting myself. As well, I can identify the more toxic relationships in my own life, and I have started distancing myself from them.

2. After the workshop, lingering hints of communication styles persisted in the back of my mind, and I was often reminded to demonstrate assertiveness over other passive forms of communication. Reflecting back, I often went along with the flow of other individuals’ wants and needs. Now, I focus on demonstrating my own assertive forms of communication, and they in turn make my relationships feel more comfortable and genuine.

3. After attending the workshop and talking about relationships (which is a topic I think people my age don’t usually think about), I think me and my peers became more aware of our boundaries and it helped me understand myself better. It also centralized on platonic relationships as well, which I think is something we often forget is a considered a relationship. It was insightful into lots of minute actions that we could take in bettering friendships, even if we were already in a healthy relationship. Although I do not see any significant changes among my peers, I do find myself thinking more often about different ways I can approach a relationship since I have attended the workshop. This has helped me become more aware of my impact on relationships, which I think was a crucial takeaway from the workshop.

what was your overall experience in taking the healthy relationship workshop course like?

1. I would say that it was a very insightful, informative, and interactive workshop. Not only does this workshop apply to romantic relationships, but I was able to take away some things about my friendships and connections with my family and peers. There were many opportunities to have helpful conversations with people around me who have a variety of life experiences, and the workshop had a really nice engaging component with the activities that kept me interested.

2. The Healthy Relationships workshop was surprisingly engaging and interesting to me. In all honesty, informative presentations, especially if they’re given by adults to students, can be kind of boring and sometimes don’t connect that well. However, I really liked this workshop, especially the interactive parts like the traffic light activity. I got to learn what my peers thought about certain situations and how they might react differently from me. I think it’s really important to understand that everyone has different circumstances and experiences which influence their responses to relationship behaviours and this workshop helped to impress that on me.

3. I would definitely recommend taking the healthy relationships course. I think word of mouth is probably the way I’d share because there are a lot of misconceptions about the topic of ‘healthy relationships’ and how wide of a scope it pertains. I think in order to share my experience in the workshop I’d have to explain the activities I participated in. I genuinely enjoyed the workshop and feel that, especially after having time to reflect and put the knowledge into practice, the workshop benefited me and hopefully my relationships. I would also help promote it through social media if it was repeated.

How do you feel information in the workshops was received differently between having Sarah teach the content versus you (as peers) teaching it?

1. I think we struck a really nice balance between Sarah and the Student Solidary Committee (SSC) teaching content during the workshop itself. It was useful to hear important information being shared by someone we knew was a professional who had a ton of experience. It was a good idea for the SSC Executives to run the interactive activities though because those were more in the style of games, so there was a more casual and relaxed environment surrounding them.

2. I felt that in the workshop, the information I received was a bit shocking, with some things that were not surprising. I liked how Sarah shared some pamphlets that were given out on university campuses. Specifically, the mean girls one as it is more appealing to the people of my generation as it relates to pop culture which many find cool.

Anything else?

1. I genuinely enjoyed the workshop and I felt like I learned some very useful terms and strategies when it comes to recognizing the nature of relationships and responding to certain healthy and unhealthy behaviours. I really appreciate the time that The Today Centre took to create and hold this workshop and I think that it will continue to benefit a lot of people who participate in it.