Program Summary
In 2004, the Family Violence Project received a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for two purposes: 1) to educate the community about all types of family violence and 2) to develop a curriculum to address the issue of teen dating violence in Orange County. As a result of this funding, the Family Violence Project developed a series of one day trainings intensive family violence prevention trainings and presented them to the following community members; 14,833 faith leaders, 23,783 educators, 14,000 teens and 3500 military families.
In order to accomplish the second goal of the grant, the Family Violence Project team put together a panel of experts from the Orange County Department of Education, the Catholic Diocese of Orange County, clinical psychologists, educational theorists, domestic violence shelters, and teens from across the County and created a the teen dating violence curriculum, Save the Date. The curriculum development team designed the Save the Date curriculum to contain five activity based lessons for tenth grade classrooms which combines group activities, reflective activities, reading, and analysis in five one-hour lessons. Among other subjects, students learn about healthy and abusive relationship characteristics, including subtle warning signs of abuse; gender stereotypes; media influence; and how to get help for themselves or friends involved in abusive relationships.
The next step was to pilot the teen program in one high school in each of five school districts which encompassed a total of approximately 1300 students. The teachers were handpicked and went through extensive “train the trainer” sessions and were provided the materials to take back and present to their classes. The workbooks are all inclusive of the lesson plans as well as handouts for copying. The pilot was an absolute success. Research was gathered which indicated that the students, teachers and parents rated the program as extremely informative, eye-opening and critically needed.
The Family Violence Project then took our research and draft curriculum back to the U.S Department of Justice provided who reviewed it one more time and then subsidized the printing of 2800 “Save the Date” curriculum workbooks in order to be distributed it throughout Southern California. The goal of the program is to saturate Orange County high schools with the curriculum which is ready to incorporate into the curriculum of their health classes.
This workbook is available free of charge to anyone interested in reviewing, duplicating, and/or implementing the program. To order a copy, please send an email to the contact FVP with your mailing address.
| 1615 East 17th Street | Santa Ana, California 92705 | 714.619.0256 | 714.619.0251 fax |