West Mercia Women’s Aid is working in partnership with The RightPath and Everyone’s Invited to deliver the Young Person’s Prevention Project – a programme designed to challenge misogyny, break down harmful stereotypes, and promote healthy relationships in our schools and communities.
Over the last month we have been busy securing bookings and have started delivering sessions with feedback highlighting just how valuable this work is.
To date we have secured nine bookings to provide work around Healthy Relationships to young people who are not attending School. We delivered the first of these sessions last week at a residential home in Hereford, to male and female young people. The session was a great success with the young people fully engaging in the session.
Everyone’s Invited have so far delivered 15 sessions in 11 schools, reaching 2767 students. Feedback has been positive with students commenting that “(The sessions were) informative and eye-opening” and “very non-judgemental”, and they like “how truthful it was”, “that it didn’t leave anything out”, and that the sessions “didn’t sugar coat it”. Following the workshop sessions 90% of students felt that they could name gendered pressures and explain why they are harmful and 70% felt they had a better understanding of gas lighting and unhealthy relationship behaviours.
Staff training has also been delivered to six schools, with 27 professionals attending.
The Rightpath have secured 22 Schools bookings, and are already delivering sesssion in eight of these.
Again, feedback has been very positive with comments as follows:
“I’ve had quite a few members of staff come up to me and said how impressed the Y11’s were with the sessions – they were so happy that you were discussing their experiences and giving advice…your session really struck a chord with them.”
“Confident and well prepared”
“(The material) was very relevant and was made very accessible”
“(The facilitators) are passionate about what they do and so very valuable”. One teacher fed back that they have already recommended the service to other schools.
We know there is a need for this intervention and we want to reach as many community groups as possible to take part in the programme. Our free workshops are running across West Mercia – spaces are limited and all sessions must be booked and delivered by 31st March 2025.
Find out more about The Young Person’s Prevention Project and how to book here.