Be the Program: Healthy Relationships and Teen Dating Violence Prevention

Be the Program is designed to promote healthy relationships for young people 12-24 years old with activities that develop critical thinking, active listening, and peer influencer skills.

Delivering Be the Program in my community.

Be the Program leverages the power of youth influence to improve relationship health and reduce teen dating violence. Be the Program supports youth to better understand relationships, identify root causes of violence, and support their peers to think critically and make decisions that lead to healthier relationships.

The SCC delivered Be the Program over 5 years in partnership with organizations across Canada. The program demonstrated key outcomes in leadership and influence, critical thinking, and knowledge about healthy relationships. Youth also shared that the program approach, to be responsive and adaptive within the parameters of a shared safer space, was key to their positive experiences.

Bring the curriculum, including the core curriculum and booster sessions, into your space. Deliver at your own pace, tweak and adjust to meet the needs of your youth population. For more information or to access the curriculum, please contact Christa: christa@studentscommission.ca

What Is An Influencer? | Qu'est-ce Qu'une Influenceuse Ou Un Influenceur?

The Curriculum includes six Modules, each with specific objectives and activities. When delivered in person, the entire curriculum requires about 16 hours of time.

Many Factors contribute to Social Identity Formation. They include family, socializing, community, school, genetics, personal experiences, privilege, and socio-economic status. A cartoon character of a young person stands at the centre of these factors.

This module focuses on creating a safer space, setting group guidelines, and understanding the purpose of the program.

Brick by brick isolated experiences build walls of polarization. The young person is hemmed in by these walls.

This module explores how we gather, assess, and critically unpack information we learn from the world around us.

Polarized Us and Them groups form behind walls. Does our young character stay within that wall or step beyond?

This module focuses on understanding healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviours, the nuance of relationships, and the connection between certain behaviours and relationship violence. Participants will explore their own boundaries and expectations within relationships, and how and why they make the decisions they do in relationships.

New Safer Spaces encourage positive contact with diverse others and break down walls that isolate. Our character and other young people may come together for many reasons including curiousity, a mutual friend, common interest, a chance encounter, or being encouraged by a trusted adult.

This module prepares youth influencers to apply their learnings to conversations and interactions with peers in ways that leverage and support their peers’ desire to change, to make healthier decisions, and engage in positive relationships. It explores motivational interviewing, including active listening practices.

By exploring diverse experiences together young people may build positive momentum. Our young characters work and play with others, share ideas, and build mutual trust.

When a safer space remains intact, a group builds positive momentum towards meaningful connection and identity development. Through group interactions members develop trust and feel validated for their presence. People begin to realize they are not as different from one another as they might have initially thought. As group interaction embodies qualities of safety, the more confident members begin to share their stories.

A young person jumping from a safer space to connect with others crosses a Bridge of Vulnerability. Being vulnerable involves taking a risk. Safer spaces try to ensure that trust is not compromised and that our young character experiences a flash of connection with others. Ideally, young people become less polarized and feel a greater sense of belonging.

This module discusses with peer influencers how they can move forward with making change in their schools and communities.

New safer spaces encourage young people to be social and explore their identity in positive ways. A cartoon image showing diverse youth, each crossing their own bridge, to gather in a safer space.