Peace House February 2022 Newsletter

It's February 2022. This month boasts the date 02/22/22 . . . and it falls on a Tuesday!

This newsletter features updates from our prevention education team, including welcoming one new staff member and parting words from her predecessor. We look forward to continuing our community collaborations and connections with all of you!

Important Events
February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month

Every February, young people and their loved ones join together across the country for a national effort to raise awareness about the issue of teen dating violence through Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. This annual, month-long awareness campaign focuses on advocacy and education to stop dating abuse before it starts.

For more information, please visit Love is Respect, Centers for Disease Control

February is also Black History Month

The relevance of February goes back to 1926, when Association for the Study of African American Life and History founder Dr. Carter G. Woodson first established “Negro History Week” during the second week of February. And why that week? Because it encompasses the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
By the time of Woodson's death in 1950, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life, and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid–century, mayors of cities nationwide issued proclamations noting Negro History Week.
The first official observance came in February 1976, from President Gerald Ford, whose words established Black History Month in eloquent homage to Woodson and ASALH. He proclaimed: “In the Bicentennial year of our Independence, we can review with admiration the impressive contributions of black Americans to our national life . . . [T]o help highlight these achievements, Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. We are grateful to him today for his initiative, and we are richer for the work of his organization.”

For more information, please visit Library of Congress, Association for the Study of African American Life and History

2/15 Tune in to Park City Television at 8:10 AM to hear updates from Peace House!

Meet Our New Staff Member

We are excited to welcome Emma Zevallos, Director of Prevention Education!

Prevention Education Updates

Emma Zevallos
Director of Prevention Education

Sam Janse
Prevention Specialist

Emma Zevallos is the former Assistant Director at UCASA and former Client Coordinator at the Rape Recovery Center. She has been in the advocacy field for six years, beginning at the Rape Recovery Center as a volunteer in May of 2016. Emma has hands-on experience as a skills counselor, a crisis counselor on the Hospital Response Team, and a primary prevention educator educating the community on healthy relationships and overall knowledge about sexual violence. She is passionate about ending sexual violence and closing gaps in services. As the Prevention and Education team launches into 2022 under Emma's guidance, new community level presentations will be implemented. Safe Bars curricula will prepare hospitality workers to deescalate workplace challenges, and Bystander Intervention for counterworkers is already being dispersed across Summit and Wasatch counties. In addition, Peace House will increase implementation of CUT IT OUT, a domestic violence prevention presentation for salon professionals, as well as add a Bystander Intervention component to presentations in salon schools across the state. The year 2022 will be exciting for Prevention and Education!

A parting message from Leisa Mukai, previous Director of Prevention Education

The Peace House Prevention and Education team responds to community needs in a myriad of ways. Over the past four-and-a-half years, we have expanded upon the child abuse prevention legacy in the four school districts in Summit and Wasatch counties. We replaced Prevent Child Abuse Utah curricula with Safer, Smarter Kids, a program produced by the Lauren Brooks Foundation that provides video clips and a developmental curriculum addressing body boundaries, consent, coercion, rights, and responsibilities. Additionally, we created Friending, which provides students with positive friendship skills and tools to prevent bullying. In high schools, we have enhanced our Healthy Relationship presentations and added Bystander Intervention, which provides skills in deescalating situations that range from awkward to abusive. In the community, we refreshed our community walk from the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event in August to the new Domestic Violence Awareness Month March on Main Street in October. We have engaged our community with live and virtual movies: Roll Red Roll, The Hunting Ground, City of Joy, Leitis in Waiting, and micro documentaries. We have created awareness displays, including Missing from the Table, which recognizes the lives lost to domestic violence in 2019; The Clothesline Project, involving graphic t-shirts that represent the experiences of domestic violence survivors; pinwheel gardens that commemorate Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April; and purple ribbons tied at central locations in four towns in two counties. We have shared our mission and resources at community events such as the Wasatch County Fair, Francis Frontier Days, Silly Market, Kamas Rodeo, Summit County Fair, and Safety Fairs in Summit and Wasatch counties. We had lots of fun with our Park City High School club, End Violence Now. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Prevention and Education to grow in new directions using more recorded and virtual options. As we shifted from in-person community engagements to virtual, we enhanced our social media presence with public service announcements, blogs, and Instagram and Facebook posts. We built collaborations with our sister agencies across the state, leaned on state organizations, and built allyships with Encircle, Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, and the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. All of these efforts and more add up to 44,961 student contacts and 33,173 community contacts, totaling 78,134 contacts in the past four-and-a-half years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L6HB97lbrQ&t=44s

Community Outreach
In January, a small group of staff and volunteers underwent Safe Bars trainings. This training empowers participants to facilitate conversations with hospitality workers in restaurants, bars, and other venues, and to become more aware of their ability to intervene in times of potential crisis, harassment, or assault. If your business would like us to host a training, please reach out. The trainings are short and informative and can help to mitigate an unhealthy or harmful situation that could affect someone forever.
Contact Emma@peacehouse.org to schedule your training.

Want to be a part of Peace House? We are hiring for multiple positions. Check out our careers page to apply today!