This October during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Albemarle Hopeline’s Prevention Educator partnered with the Northeast Academy of Aerospace and Advanced Technologies (NEAAAT) to pilot an evidence-based teen dating violence curriculum with ninth grade students. With the third edition of “Safe Dates," students learned about everything from red flags, consent, boundary setting, and managing feelings, to how to help a friend who may be in an abusive relationship.

Current data shows that 1 in 3 high school students are likely to end up in an unhealthy or abusive relationship before they even graduate, showing why getting this information to teenagers is so incredibly important to prevent abuse. Opening up a dialogue in a space where the teens felt comfortable with both Hopeline’s trained Prevention Educator and their health teacher Coach Towell, helped them set their own standards for how they want to be treated and how they want to treat others. And according to the students themselves it worked – Hopeline received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both classes who attended sessions, and marked improvement through pre- and post-testing. As one student humorously put it on the anonymous survey: “I didn’t know jack squat about this stuff until now, so that’s cool.”

If you’re a teacher, school employee, member of an organization, or anyone who has a group that could benefit from healthy relationship/domestic violence/sexual assault programming or training, please get in touch at prevention@albemarlehopeline.org