Safe Space

Unwelcome flirting, obscene gestures, sexual comments about someone's body and appearance, questions about sexual and intimate life, joking about sexual and gender identity, offensive jokes with sexual subtext, commenting on a person's mood in relation to the menstrual cycle or sex life, unsolicited e-mails, photos or messages of a sexual nature, groping, touching without permission, presurring into sexal acts without consent, bullying, ignoring someone’s physical or psychological boundaries and many others. 

These events happen all the time, during every camp or project, and for many reasons the victims, in majority girls, often do not speak up for themselves and the bystanders do not act upon it either. And thus the perpetrators are never confronted with the fact that their behavior has a terrible impact on somebody else’s well-being. 

So far, youth workers are hardly ever trained to address incidents of harassment during a youth exchange, camp or free time activities. They are often not even aware that the participants of their program subject each other to sexual harassmet which results in the activities having more of a harfmul rather than empowering effect.

When the youth workers do find out about an incident of harassment, they often fail to act upon it. Either, because they do not know how and don’t feel confident to deal with it, or because ignoring the incident alltogether and treating it as if it is no big deal just seems easier, than actually facing the problem of sexual harassment and dealing with it head on.

Research shows that experiencing sexual harassment has a significant negative impact on the victims’ life: their well-being, confidence, relationships, behaviors, career, identity. These incidents undermine the person's utmost basic need for safety.  

The project aims to train youth workers in adopting tools and attitudes for:

• primary prevention = creating conditions that prevent incidents of sexual harassment, i.e. creating safe space
• secondary prevention = providing care for the victim and the bystanders of the incident, preventing secondary victimization, dealing with the perpetrator
• tertiary prevention = ensuring care for the group after the incident, re-establishing safe space

The training course will take place in the Czech Republic, Statek Habří, 3 - 11 October 2022, and it will involve 7 full program days and 2 traveling days. Full presence at the course, physical and mental, is required.