Tuesday, August 20, 2013

1 of 12 Chosen to Create Change: Where It Begins


Hello all! My name is Kristin Canan, and I am passionately committed to ending interpersonal violence around the world! Are you willing to partner with me on this mission?

So how, you ask, do we go about ending such a huge epidemic like interpersonal violence? I believe it starts by each of us working to end violence in our own communities.

For me, my community is the University of Denver (DU). I am currently a graduate student at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work, and I am set to graduate this June with my Masters Degree in Social Work and an Interpersonal Trauma Studies Certification. I am loving the University community I am part of, but like many college students around the nation, I have continuously been feeling and seeing the devastating effects of my own campus community perpetuating and tolerating the cycle of violence, specifically sexual assault, dating/domestic violence, stalking, and harassment. Having a background in campus education and advocacy, sexual assault victim advocacy, domestic violence victim advocacy, social justice programming, and victim crisis responding, strongly encouraged me to get involved in initiating change at DU. I wasn’t exactly sure what that change was going to look like but I eventually stumbled upon an office on campus dedicated to prevention, education, and support surrounding gender-based violence: the Center for Advocacy, Prevention, and Education (CAPE).

After getting involved with the one office we have on campus dedicated to advocacy, support, and prevention for interpersonal violence issues, which is staffed with one staff member who splits her time between the CAPE office as Program Director and the Health and Counseling Center as a Senior Staff Psychologist, I was further exposed to where vast gaps exist on DU’s campus in relation to resources for advocacy, support, prevention, and education. I decided I had to do more to change the entire campus culture.

I started working with the CAPE office’s prevention, education, and programming efforts, but I was finding myself feeling like I still had limited influence over what I saw as the biggest issue in the perpetuation of interpersonal violence: the campus system and culture that tolerates and sometimes encourages behavior that leads to interpersonal violence, mostly through inaction and ignorance (whether that be administration, students, faculty, staff, etc.). I struggled with the limitations of one person’s influence; how could I make the changes I saw were necessary as one person?

During my involvement with the CAPE office this past spring, I was presented with what seemed to be the perfect opportunity to make the impactful difference at DU I had been craving. Ashley Olson, who is one of my former supervisors, mentors, and a very close friend of mine from my undergrad at University of Wisconsin-River Falls who has taught me most of what I know about advocacy, social action, and social justice, emailed me an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. This opportunity was through Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund), and it brought graduate students together from across the nation to create and implement plans for campus development and violence prevention specifically surrounding sexual assault, dating/domestic violence, and reproductive coercion knowing these are extremely prevalent issues on college campuses. I immediately created a campus plan, filled out the application, and anxiously waited to hear from Futures Without Violence about the Campus Leadership Fellow position.  

I am very honored (and excited) to say that I am one of twelve incredibly privileged graduate students chosen across the nation who has the opportunity to represent Futures Without Violence as a Campus Leadership Fellow over this academic year developing and implementing programming, resources, curricula, policy, prevention initiatives, and/or trainings on our respective campuses to contribute to a future without violence, specifically surrounding sexual assault, dating/domestic violence, and reproductive coercion. Students from Harvard Medical School, Boston University, Simmons College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Medical School, University of Kentucky, St. Louis University, University of Denver, University of New Mexico, and University of California-Berkeley have been tasked with the continuously fought, uphill battle of working towards creating safer communities. We come from all different backgrounds and are currently studying a variety of subjects including medicine, anthropology, social work, counseling, and public health, but we all have one common passion that draws us together: we are fiercely dedicated to ending interpersonal violence.

Over the next year, we will all implement personalized plans and projects on our respective campuses. We will have successes, frustrations, and struggles. We will make changes, and we may fall short on some of our goals. Whatever the outcomes may be, we hope that we can initiate changes on campuses around the nation and create sustainable programs that can be adapted to other communities.

We invite you to follow our journey throughout the next year: learn with us, celebrate with us, get frustrated with us, and please take the opportunity to adapt what we are doing to make changes in your own respective communities. 

You can follow the entire cohort of twelve campus leaders on facebook under Futures Without Violence Campus Leadership Program at https://www.facebook.com/groups/FuturesCLP/, and I will be updating this blog at least monthly with DU's progress and my experiences (both positive and negative) implementing programming and attempting to fill in the gaps in DU's current services and education. 

Changing an entire campus culture is a pretty tall order, but I am dedicated to creating sustainable change at DU to foster a safer community and a more enjoyable experience for all current and future students, faculty, and staff.  


So here’s to an amazing, eventful, sometimes stressful, life-changing year to come!
Cheers to all of our future adventures and to all of you who will be following and supporting me over the next year! I cannot thank you enough!

With much gratitude and best wishes,

Kristin Canan
Futures Without Violence Campus Leadership Fellow
University of Denver


Futures Without Violence Campus Leadership Fellows from left to right: Gina Capra, Kristin Canan, Ariel Jones, Sara Skavroneck, Alishka Abioye, Nisha Verma, Angela Catena, Colin Gallant, Natalia Truszczynski, Jane Pomeroy, and Mitali Thakor; Missing: Neha Deshpande