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Weber State University's sexual violence prevention training soon will include workshops specifically tailored to the LGBT community.
Those workshops currently are being developed with the help of a recently awarded about $50,000 grant from the state Department of Health. Twenty-one entities across the state received a total of nearly $550,000 — appropriated this past legislative session — to implement sexual violence prevention programs. Weber State was the only university to receive funding.
Stephanie McClure, director of the school's Women's Center, said the two workshops will focus on consent and bystander intervention related to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Ogden.
University officials chose to focus this grant on the LGBT population in part because their specific needs often are not the focus at the Women's Center, McClure said.
"They have very particular needs and dynamics they face in relationships, not just with intimate partners but with all relationships — especially in the cultural context within the state," McClure said. "They deal with a lot of discrimination."
To develop the workshops' curriculum, the university will be conducting research and students will be surveyed on the topic. A photo voice project — where individuals are given a prompt, such as healthy relationships, and asked to photograph what that means to them — also will be used as input, McClure said.
The hope is to make the workshops available to the school's about 26,000 students during the 2017-2018 school year, she said. The workshops will not be mandatory, but students will be able to attend several throughout the year. Campus groups also can request the workshops be held for their members, she added.
The university currently hosts various other prevention workshops and McClure said attendance typically hovers around 20 people. They have had as many as 70, however, she added.
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Salt Lake also received funding from the department and will use it to expand its Safe Dates program. The program helps teens recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, according to a department news release.
The grant, which amounts to about $23,000, will allow the program to expand into all teen centers in Salt Lake and Tooele counties, said Amanda Hughes, the clubs' director of development.
"For many of our teens, violence and abuse are unfortunately a part of their everyday lives," said LeAnn Saldivar, the clubs' president and CEO. "This funding is critical in helping our teens learn healthy and safe relationship skills – habits that they will carry with them into adulthood."
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