0:00:00.3 Sally Laskey: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to and preventing sexual abuse and assault. On this episode, we learn about the Askable Adult prevention campaign from Vermont. I'm joined by Chani Waterhouse and Amy Torchia from the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and their project evaluator, Rebecca Gurney.

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0:00:41.5 SL: Welcome to Resource on the Go. Chani, Amy and Rebecca, we are so excited to have you all joining us today. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves and your work with the Vermont Network? 

0:00:56.7 Chani Waterhouse: I can start. Sally, first, thanks so much for inviting us to be part of this podcast. My name is Chani Waterhouse, and I work for the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. I'm the Director of Member Relations, and I also manage the Rape Prevention Education, or RPE Grant Program, for the Vermont Network.

0:01:16.7 Amy Torchia: Hey, everybody, my name is Amy Torchia, and I work with the Network as a contractor on projects that have to do with children, youth and families, and I started my work in the late '80s as a children's advocate in a domestic violence shelter. I worked there for a long time. Glad to be here today.

0:01:36.6 Rebecca Gurney: And my name is Rebecca Gurney. I am the evaluator for Vermont's Rape Prevention Education Program. I've been the evaluator on this program since about 2014, and I've worked in sexual violence prevention and intervention program since the middle of the '90s in all kinds of roles and capacities. And I have a public health background with a specific focus on evaluation and sexual violence prevention.

0:02:04.6 SL: Well, I'm excited to learn more about your Askable Adult campaign. Amy, could you start us off by telling us what an askable adult is and how it relates to sexual violence prevention? 

0:02:18.3 AT: Well, in a nutshell, an askable adult is one who is approachable and easy for children and youth to talk about anything that is on their mind. They are committed to having strong and effective, trusting and affirming relationships with children and youth. So, for some history about how we came to understand this, I wanna just share a little bit about how we got started. In late 2017, the Network's Youth Advocacy Task Force conducted a very unscientific but really wonderful survey with youth who were ages 10-24 in Vermont. We asked them about their concerns that they were having at home and in their community and what they thought would help them with those concerns. So nearly 600 Vermont Youth responded and ranked having more askable and supportive adults, number one in helping them with their school and community concerns. And the number three thing, to help them with their concerns at home. So having askable adults was ranked high across all gender identities and age groups. It was identified by 83% of non-binary and gender queer youth, and 73% of youth who were ages 17 and 18. So that intrigued us quite a bit and gave us a strong thread to follow to learn more from youth about what they meant by an askable adult.

0:03:49.8 AT: And so we followed up with a photo cord campaign and we asked them who their askable adults are, what makes those folks askable for them, and what they would talk to about with their askable adults? Again, we learned a great deal from youth, including that they reach out to all kinds of adults, parents, other relatives, teachers, friends of sisters, parents of friends, and they were looking for folks who were trustworthy, non-judgmental and kind, just to let you know a few of the qualities that they identified. And when we asked them what they would talk to their askable adults about, the number one answer was life. And after life, they talked about things like problems. They said anything: Drugs, bullying, school, relationships, sexuality, and the list just goes on to include things like fixing a car, college, small issues. And we did have a few responses where youth couldn't identify an askable adult in their life, and that was also a really important information for us adults to hear. So from there, we made a real commitment to hold these voices central and then kind of pair them up with some literature and research. Rebecca can share what she learned when she did that work for the project.

0:05:22.3 RG: Thanks, Amy. Yeah, so my project as the evaluator was to understand what the groundwork was, what was already out there in the world of askable adults. Was the phrase askable adult even the right one for the work that we wanted to do? And kind of on a parallel track, at the same time as Amy and the Youth Advocacy Task Force was conducting its survey with youth, Vermont's RPE program was working on our own assessment that was setting us up to select state-wide indicators. And we understood... We had a team of prevention folks and youth folks who already understood that youth populations were our focus, but from there, we didn't really know where we were headed. We didn't know what the unmet needs were that aligned with the RPE framework, and the what and the how we're kind of wide open at that point. So we embarked on some qualitative research and interviewed about 40 adults who work with youth. So Amy was talking, or surveying youth, and we were talking to adults who work with youth, and we used structured interviews and focus groups with very wide open-ended questions, and heard again and again and again without actually asking this question, that we needed to focus on adults.

0:06:46.5 RG: So the prevention folks, the educators, the teachers, the coaches, the school nurses and health specialists all were saying, adults are ever-present in the lives of youth, they are often under-resourced, they are often products of the culture that we live in and are imparting information that may not be based on the best practices, the kinds of information that we in the field would like folks to have. They might be just subtly reinforcing some old messages, and they might just be people who really wanna do well or really wanna connect with youth from their lives and don't have the tools and don't know how. So we heard this again and again and again from all kinds of folks. So that assessment process and the survey then led us to do just a literature review. So we looked at many, many, many resources from all kinds of folks. We learned that the askable adults phrase and that framework really came out of some pregnancy prevention work that was going on in the '90s, it dovetailed with some other sexual health work, and there were some campaigns and local initiatives that were really focused on how adults could be askable in those contexts.

0:08:10.2 RG: But it also overlaid with all of the work around asset building, the Positive Youth Development frameworks, and also tied into the emerging framework that we had been learning about over the last several years through the Rape Prevention Education project around risk and protective factors and understanding how healthy environments, how connections to safe and supportive adults and peers, all of these other factors kind of lay together to create a prevention context. So all of that work kind of fit together for us. And the literature review focused on just two key questions, which is, What is an askable adult? And, What strategies are effective in reaching and preparing adults to engage with youth? So we put those two questions at the center, and then looked at a lot of the literature to really flesh out a framework of what are the ways that adults can be positioned to be those askable people in the lives of young adults? 

0:09:19.8 CW: And this is Chani, I'll just add that all of this work that Rebecca really provided leadership for set us up to get very clear within our RPE grant program that we wanted to bring a focus to adults. Also, I wanted to add that here at the Network, we think very broadly about our work to end violence, and we see our work as anti-oppression work broadly, and we feel like supporting all people to thrive is what we need to be doing if we wanna actually create the future that we need. So this idea of asset, youth asset and youth development focused work just aligns really well with that broad intersectional way that we think about our work and creating wellness in individuals and in our communities. But to bring it back to the RPE grant program, we are really focused on how we can make sure adults are really engaged and really understand the crucial role that they play and feel empowered to support and partner with youth to prevent sexual harm. And as Rebecca referenced, we know that even adults who wanna be supportive to youth may not be sure how to do that, and may feel insecure about whether youth really want that support.

0:10:43.0 CW: So we chose with this campaign to focus on adults who had a higher level of readiness, so adults who wanna be supportive to the youth in their lives and have a sense that it's an important thing to do. And the campaign really calls on them to step up, strengthen their relationships with youth, and understand that this is a way to create changes in communities as well as in relationships.

0:11:08.8 SL: So I'm a little giddy over here to have you all talk about intersectionality, to be centering the voices of youth and to be bringing in the work of evaluation and how that can help in program development right from the beginning, and then also helping people who want to help and giving them the tools. I'm just so excited and I could ask about 15 more questions just about that, but I wanna make sure our listeners first hear more about what this campaign involves. Could you tell us about the components of it? 

0:11:55.2 CW: This is Chani and I can start. Our campaign had two main strategies. The first was a 12-week social media campaign and blog series, and we rolled that out on Facebook, Instagram and email. And with this strategy, our objective was to reach a larger number of Vermont adults with messaging about their role as askable adults to really engage people and build motivation. And our data showed that we reached over 4400 Vermonters with the social media campaign, which is not a huge percentage of Vermonters, but is also a lot for... The Vermont Network hadn't done a campaign of this type, and our social media reach is not as broad as we hope it will be in the future, and so this was really... It was a success for us in terms of having a bigger reach than we typically do and figuring out ways to grow that reach. The second strategy aims for deeper engagement with a smaller group of Vermont adults, and the components of this strategy include a curriculum for adult learning and tools to help adults build our own skills and to engage other adults to do the same. And we also created audio stories that are woven into the social media campaign as well as the adult learning curriculum. And our skill building tools, just for your information, are all housed on the Network's askable adults web page, and they're all available for free, and Amy can talk a little bit more about those elements.

0:13:31.4 AT: Thanks, Chani. So I do wanna dive a little bit into a couple of the tools. And remember, that these all culminated because we were listening to youth and what they told us. We were really relying on the information that Rebecca pulled together for us, and then our Youth Advocates Task Force, which is a group of advocates who work with children and youth and do education work and prevention work, really vetted a lot of the information and made sure that we were hitting the ground and making it relevant for parents and really lifting up the voices of kids. So the first one is a skill building toolkit for adults, and it's really to help us become more askable. And the tool kit has four components, and each tool includes tips and tricks and resources. And the four tools are: One, building trusting and affirming relationships, two, committing to consistent connections with youth, three, committing to caring communication, and four, to be a curious co-pilot. And those four components were what kind of also led our blog writing and our campaign over the 12 weeks. The other tool that I wanna mention is a lesson plan and conversation starter document. It's accessible for the general community, it's on our website, as Chani said.

0:15:00.9 AT: There's a facilitator guide for folks who wanna bring this material to adults in their communities, and then there's a participant guide, which is more of a workbook. So as a facilitator is doing a workshop, participants are following along in their workbook. And we have created it using adult learning principles, it's very, very activity-based, and it can be adapted for Zoom, which we did, and we have some tools that we can share with folks if they ask us for those. They're not on the website right now, but they're readily available. The other part of that guide is that we wanted to create something a little bit more informal, and so at the end of those documents is a really kind of more informal conversation guide. And we were hoping that adults may bring that to more informal situations like parties or support groups, or a staff meeting where you just wanna have a conversation and not a two-hour training. So there's that. And then I just wanna mention the blog posts. So, as we were rolling out the 12-week campaign, we wrote a blog every couple of weeks and we emailed it to people, but those are also on our website. And they talk about the tools, but they dive into some additional topics like how to be askable for little kids, navigating tricky conversations with youth, and about youth and adults learning from each other.

0:16:32.0 SL: I think about all of the times working as a prevention educator where adults, friends, parents, co-workers have asked me for tips and tools, and I can see so many of these things being able to answer those questions immediately that folks had. I love that your tools are accessible to folks, and we're actually gonna play one of the audio stories from the campaign right now. So could you set up this clip before we share it? 

0:17:06.6 CW: Yeah, this is Chani. I can do that. So we were so excited to be able to incorporate storytelling into the campaign, and we were able to work with consultants who had expertise in digital storytelling and digital media production, and host a couple of amazing workshops where youth-adult pairs shared stories about their real life relationships and how the adults were supporting and being askable for the youth. These were really fun. They were pre-pandemic in-person events, we served dinner, people got to learn about how to tell stories in a way that's really engaging and supports others learning. And so this story is about a relationship between a health teacher named Meg and a high school student named Bailey. And during the workshop, they interviewed each other and our digital media production consultant recorded the conversation and then produced this audio story. Just a funny aside, we're Zooming in from Vermont, which is small, and it's so small that it turns out that Amy and I both have a personal connection with Meg through our kids having had the privilege of having her as their health teacher. And so you get a feel for this clip that sort of how she goes about building relationships with youth, and we can attest to the fact that it works, and it's really powerful for... And I wish that Meg could be a mentor to health teachers everywhere, 'cause I think she's really effective.

0:18:44.4 SL: Well, folks, we'll get to hear that story right now.

0:18:50.8 Meg: So my name is Meg.

0:18:53.3 Bailey: My name is Bailey.

0:18:53.8 Meg: And I am Bailey's health teacher at a middle high school in Central Vermont. We met way back when she was in seventh grade. I taught her in seventh and eighth grade, and then I taught her again her sophomore year.

0:19:07.0 Bailey: So I wanna know, what do you see as the benefits of being in meaningful relationships with youth, aka being an askable adult? 

0:19:13.5 Meg: When you create a relationship with a human, whether it's a 12-year-old or an 18-year-old or a 98-year-old, trust is at the core, respect is at the core. If you can do that in a classroom, content will come, proficiencies will come. I teach health education. I do not believe there's a more personal, intimate content that is taught in a public school setting, so I take probably far too much time at the beginning of the quarter and semester getting to know my kids and letting my kids get to know me. I think the benefits of being an askable adult is you get to create really kick-ass relationships with really amazing people, like yourself. How would you describe our relationship? 

0:19:55.0 Bailey: Obviously, there's a student-teacher relationship, but I think now that we're not in class together, we have made a connection outside of that school environment. I think we've sort of matured from the classroom setting into more of a mentor and mentee. We talk to each other about stuff that doesn't have to do with school. What would you tell other adults who want to be more askable? 

0:20:24.9 Meg: Listen, I think I even tell myself that today. I was like... A kid came in and asked something. And I've started to like... I don't know what teacher at school said this, but they said, "A student came into my classroom and said, Do you want feedback or do you just want me to listen?" And I was like, "Brilliant. I'm taking that one. I'm writing that one down." And I did, and I still to this day. And today, I asked a kid. I said, "Do you want my opinion? Do you want my feedback? Or do you just want a space to listen?" And I honestly will tell you, 80% of the time, they just wanna be listened to. Parents will tell them what to do, teachers tell them what to do all day, society is telling them what to do. Sometimes being an askable adult is coming into a room with another human and just taking space to be like, "There it is."

0:21:15.5 Speaker 7: All adults can strengthen relationships with the young people in their lives. Learn how to become a more askable adult by visiting the Vermont Network website at VTNetwork.org. And give us a follow on Facebook and Instagram.

0:21:33.0 SL: It's been about a year since you launched the campaign. What lessons have you learned through this process? 

0:21:42.4 RG: This is Rebecca. I can just start a little bit with our developing evaluation plans so that we could learn some lessons. On the front end, before the social media campaign launched and before the curricular plans and tools were in place, we developed what I would consider to be a very old school, traditional, out-of-the-textbook evaluation plan. We looked at the campaign and project goals, we formulated objectives and indicators and we centered them around key questions. And really, in good evaluator speak, it started out with a question that was, "To what extent do campaign messages, the toolkit and the resources, equip adults to be more askable?" So all of the evaluation work that we did was really looking at how can we get information that helps us understand how well these resources have achieved that bigger goal of equipping adults to be more askable? 

0:22:52.3 RG: A lot of the plan development we spent understanding what tools and resources were available for the social media campaign side. For a lot of folks evaluating social media campaign is kind of new, and for the Network, this was the first campaign of its kind, so we looked at what kinds of metrics and what kind of data from the social media tools like Facebook and Instagram would be available, so what questions could we answer using that kind of quantitative data? What were the gaps there, and how would we approach filling in those gaps? Things like that. And then developed surveys to go along with the curricular pieces so that people who participated in trainings, people who accessed the campaign in other ways could also provide some direct feedback about how well they were able to use those tools.

0:23:51.5 CW: This is Chani. I can add... The evaluation plan was really gratifying to have the experience of being able to do a project like this where then we had a really clear plan for evaluation, and this was somewhat new for us as well, and honestly, kind of fun. So we're really grateful to be able to work with Rebecca on that part of it. And in terms of our big takeaways, I think the biggest one was how relevant this campaign was even in the midst of the pandemic, and I think Amy will talk a little bit more about that. But we also learned that the curriculum was easy to adapt for remote learning, which was essential, and it has so far, with one exception, it's really only been delivered remotely. And we went on to create a Zoom guide for facilitators to make it easier for people to do that. We have not a lot of data, but some data that supports the idea that some multiple modalities that we used helped us to reach more people. So it does appear that some people only viewed the email blogs and other people only viewed Facebook or Instagram, and our demographics... For us demographics on Facebook and Instagram are not that different.

0:25:09.3 CW: But for some organizations, it's really clear that their Facebook audience is older and their Instagram audience is younger, and so those kinds of things are helpful to just recognize that you're reaching different people with these different strategies, and also different learning styles, we engaged with content differently, so like an audio story may resonate with someone a lot more than a written blog does for another person, or a short post with an image. We had data from our website that showed that people who visited the askable adults web page spent a lot more time there than the average for our other pages, so that was interesting. In the first part of the campaign, even when we had social media posts that had a lot of views, we weren't getting a lot of engagement, and so we made a shift partway through the campaign in how we were writing the social media posts to be more invitational, and really encouraged people to comment or engage, and we did see some increase in that, and if we were to do it again, we would do more of that right out of the gate. And then finally, while we did encourage partners to participate and repost and whatever, we realized that we could make a bigger splash and if folks wanted to do this type of thing, make a bigger splash by having a strategy to invite partners and facilitate their participation by offering a digital engagement campaign toolkit, which we're working on right now, and maybe offering training and support.

0:26:45.4 RG: And I have a couple of lessons. First, we absolutely did the right thing by engaging our Youth Advocates Task Force as experts, and to start with the voices of children and youth and to honor them all the way through, and then to match those with the research and best practices. Even though it took more time and it takes more work to listen and get feedback, hearing what youth said, and then matching that with the research and best practice is consistently, I think, what keeps adults engaged in the campaign. And then the second and last thing from me here is the lesson of having universal themes and being flexible and responsive is really important. We were right smack in the middle of the 12-week campaign when the pandemic dramatically transformed life here in Vermont and everywhere. And we found that the content felt as relevant as ever in the context of the pandemic, and we were able to make some slight modifications to connect the content to the current events, including the isolation and social disconnection experienced by youth and parents and other adults. And then the importance of self-care as well as proactively connecting and engaging with youth. So we wrote our blog posts for March 25th, for instance, with some tools to support adults to help kids to talk about the pandemic, with tools about self-regulation and self-care, and we imagine that this would be true with other big events impacting communities and regions and countries and the world.

0:28:27.0 SL: That really is resonating with me about the importance of having those universal themes. And, of course, I think we are learning each and every day how important our flexibility is, and being responsive to the local context, but also the global context as you mentioned. So thank you for sharing some of your lessons learned. I'm wondering, Amy, could you start us off now by talking some more about what excites you most about the askable adult campaign? 

0:29:06.5 AT: I could just talk forever about this because the whole thing really excites me. It was one of my favorite things I have actually ever done in my work. I can talk a little bit about bringing more adults into the learning and how exciting that is. So far, the Network has delivered two train the trainers for a large group of Vermonters, and we did a national workshop all with adults who were from a variety of communities and disciplines, and that was just really exciting. From there, those folks, advocates and community partners in Vermont and in other states are bringing the lesson plans and workshops out to their community and adults, to more adults in their community. I've been excited over and over when I, doing those workshops, see and witness adults listening to and hearing the stories of connection that youth and adults have shared, and then relating them to their own experience, and then articulating how the tools are making them become more askable.

0:30:11.4 AT: They have been really receptive through the workshops to make commitments to become more askable themselves, really tangible, lovely commitments. And it's great to see them carrying the work forward. It would be much... And the other piece was that we've been doing some three-month follow-ups with folks who've been through the workshops, and even then they're saying a lot about how it continues to resonate with them, that they are doing a lot more listening and a lot less talking, and that they are being curious and consistent. And so that's been really inspiring to me. I know Chani has some things to share as well.

0:31:00.0 CW: Yeah, thanks so much, Amy. I also have found this to be just a really exciting and honestly just life-giving project to be able to work on, so it's been a gift. And it's cool how it is continuing to take on a way of its own. So one of the things that's most exciting to me about this is, seeing how youth actually also are really interested in it and wanna take it on, and within our RPE grant program. And I feel like it's a strategy that's supporting our goal of multi-generational movement building here in Vermont. We are really interested in growing our capacity to partner with youth and our youth-focused RPE work, so anything we're doing that focuses on youth, we wanna be doing that in partnership with youth. And we are seeing more opportunities for youth participation in askable adults efforts in general, and we have... There are a couple of youth who are so excited about this that they decided they wanted to train their peers in the curriculum, and they're doing that next week.

0:32:11.7 CW: And then one of our local RPE-funded organizations is supporting them to do that, and will be supporting that cohort of youth to then go on and bring the learning to adults in their school and in their communities. And I'm sure we're gonna learn a lot from that. And two, we only have two local funded organizations under RPE in Vermont, but they're both gonna be rolling out a phase two of the campaign, and both of them are really excited to support youth to teach this stuff to adults. And so just young people's enthusiasm and appetite for this, honestly, was a little surprising for me and has been super exciting. I wanna just say also the storytelling element is exciting and something that we think is gonna grow. Our local RPE-funded organizations wanna do more storytelling around their roll-out of phase two of the campaign, and what we believe is that storytelling about askable and supportive youth and adult relationships can be powerful and healing even when there's no product that comes out of it. And we also envision that youth partners will be able to help create some additional social media posts written really in their own voices, so youth speaking directly to adults and really inviting us into those relationships, the relationships that youth want and need to have with us.

0:33:46.8 CW: The last thing I'll say is that we know that we have... There's lots of data in Vermont that is the same as data nationally, that disconnection from adults disproportionately impacts males, younger youth, youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth. And askable adults content is just so universal and accessible for adults, and we know that as Rebecca talked about, connectedness protects against sexual harm and creates lots of other good outcomes for youth as well. So we just feel like growing adults' capacity to be the people that youth need us to be really has the potential to change youth's experiences of their communities in meaningful ways.

0:34:30.5 RG: Yeah, this is Rebecca, and I totally agree with Amy and Chani about how fun and exciting this project has been all the way along. Having worked in public health around sexual violence prevention for quite a long time, what most of us know is that we are continually learning how to connect the dots between the public health framework and sexual violence prevention and anti-oppression contexts, and there are multiple layers. And I think that this project has given us a really nice kind of a nest to plant some of our work. It's been a really wonderfully layered approach, which is, as Chani talked about, there are these multiple strategies. Those strategies were delivered over different modalities and different communication methods. And then there are all these different levels of engagement all the way across the social ecology, which for prevention activities that have sort of existed within the confines of a single box, whether that is a session, a curriculum, an individual approach, we know that that's just never going to have the widespread impact that we want. And I'm a deep believer that if you think about achieving your work, your mission, your project, your whatever, within the walls of your own organization or work or even your field or your discipline, you're never going to get what you want.

0:36:16.6 RG: You really have to sort of look at how do you bust out of those walls, how do you make it as big and broad as possible, and I think that having layers, having levels, having multiple communication opportunities is really the way to do that. So I think all of that just kind of gives this project some exciting stuff. A thing that I didn't say earlier but that is, I think, something that I definitely wanna just call attention to is, that in the big project of thinking about who are askable adults, we learned something I think that's so important, and that is that as prevention folks, we tend to get a little focused on narrow information about how well we achieved what we thought we wanted to achieve. And all of the literature really told us that if your focus is on the relationship, so if you are an adult and you are focused just on having a solid, positive, open relationship with youth, that's the goal, that's the important thing, that's the thing that creates that layer of protection. And so we often are like, Well, how well did you discuss the definition of consent? And do you think that after we did that training, that kid could walk away and verbalize the definition of consent? 

0:37:35.3 RG: And it turns out that that is all very secondary to establishing trust, having affirming relationships, communication. These essential ingredients are really non-negotiable. And if you only work on having effective, supportive, encouraging, trusting relationships between youth and adults, all the protective stuff comes with that. And so we can get a little nerdy about what we think we're trying to achieve, and I think this project has given us just this great green light to really stick with that protective factors framework, which is... I just find it to be really helpful and validating that we've been working along for such a long time to get here, and I think that where this has set our Vermont project up to go has been great. So now we're seeing lots more youth-adult partnership work, lots of more youth engagement. And I love the thing that Chani just said, which is, who on day one would have imagined that when we set out to equip adults to become more askable, youth would say, "Oh, we're the ones who can equip adults to become more askable. Let us do that teaching and training." I just think that that's been really exciting.

0:38:51.2 SL: It is, and I wanna thank you all for really listening to the youth in your state. I think that's often a huge mistake as we've professionalized our work, that we don't always stay grounded in some of those key elements of listening and connecting and trusting people to be the experts in their own lives, right? So I know that other folks are gonna be really interested in your campaign and might be looking at doing something similar in their area. You all have been giving gems through this whole conversation, but I wanna make sure if there are any specific tips that you would give to other people who are looking to do something like this, to make sure we wrap up with some of those additional ideas for folks.

0:39:54.4 AT: This is Amy. I can say that there are so many options for any one of you to adapt the materials that we've created, push them out in your own way. You could do a social media campaign, you can choose to bring the lesson plans or start conversations within your coalitions, your communities, your programs virtually or in-person. You can take a look at our campaign if you go back to the Vermont Network's Facebook page, and look back starting in February of 2020, you can follow along and see how we did it for 12 weeks. And then you can check out our website, adapt all of those things. You might wanna ask yourselves how you can engage youth in your area for your own askable adult work, and hear from them directly. And then one tip that I would have just about the lesson plan is, I think we did a good thing by making the materials really accessible to the general public, and we decided early on that we didn't wanna hold tight to it, but launch it and let folks carry it forward. So it would be so much less meaningful if we were valuing ownership and an individualization over community access. So whatever you do, I would encourage you to use this kind of universal access approach as you create materials.

0:41:18.2 CW: Thanks, Amy, for that. This is Chani. I want you to know that we are working on creating a digital engagement campaign toolkit, which will be available sometime in 2021, which I think will make it a lot easier for organizations to adapt the materials and run their own campaigns. So stay tuned for that. I would add that I think the research on what works in prevention would say that it's a good idea, if you can, to stick with the basic framework so that we're as much as possible touching on multiple layers of the social ecology. And thinking about weekly posts, like a social media campaign that's at least 12 weeks long, because the timing really helps sustains engagement and reinforce the messages that are most important. We think the multiple delivery methods are really worth sticking with. We would suggest focusing on adults who wanna be more askable, go where there's more readiness. We included adults who were already connected with our organization and interested in our mission, because we knew that they would be likely to repost and maybe more likely to engage more deeply, and that helps use the natural power of social networks to expand the reach.

0:42:47.8 CW: I think collaborating with other partners to make a bigger splash is a great idea if you have the capacity to do that. And we also did a little thinking about the essential elements of our campaign. We think that lead implementers... That it's gonna be more effective if lead implementers are organizations that are respected in their community as voices for intersectional sexual violence prevention, and that are known for centering individuals and communities who have been most impacted by sexual harm. We think it's gonna be really helpful if lead implementers have some competence in adult learning theory and practice and how adults can support positive youth development, and if they are committed to collaboration, committed to sharing resources and engaged in comprehensive sexual violence prevention efforts that can integrate with the campaign and reinforce it.

0:43:47.2 RG: So if you've gathered anything in the last half hour or so, probably the role of planning and planning and planning has been really huge and really valuable, and I think has really been a key part of how successful this has been. So my best advice is to start early. I always like to... I love a logic model like nobody's business, so I like to start out really understanding where do we wanna wind up and what are the big questions we're trying to answer with this work, and why do we think that our plans are actually the ones that are gonna get us there? I really wanna know some of those answers before we start going out and launching the campaign. So for me, the planning part here was really just important to make sure that we were lining up all the ingredients to have the best impact that they could. And we learned a lot, and so we learned ways to adapt and change all the way through, but I think that giving yourself that long lead time is really important. And then on the other side of that, when you go to sort of understanding what you've learned or to the evaluation side, I think that this has been a really great opportunity to pay attention to small progress. We often get really focused, again, on those big outcomes.

0:45:15.4 RG: I sometimes tell the story of starting out in sexual violence work and believing that... Or actually working for mission... An organization with a mission that might have been something like, our mission is to end all rape everywhere. And it was confusing 'cause we touched the lives of 300 survivors in Central Ohio. So a big mission, right? This is an opportunity to look for that small progress and really narrow the focus and answer those questions, how well are we helping adults in our communities become more askable? That's the change we're looking for through this work, and we hope that it will contribute to that bigger outcome of ending all sexual violence everywhere, but we don't need to spend all of our energy on the end, end, end goal, we can spend some energy doing really great work right here, and I think that's a very worthy project.

0:46:11.3 SL: Well, I just wanna say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your time today. It's really lovely to be sharing experiences and tools and energy from our rape prevention education family, and I know other folks are gonna be really excited to learn more about how your work develops in 2021. So thank you all for your time, and we just really appreciate you being on Resource on the Go with us.

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0:49:25.4 SL: I thank you for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go for more resources and information about preventing sexual assault. Visit our website at www.nsvrc.org, to learn more about the re-prevention education program and to access the Askable Adult campaign materials. Visit the episode resources at nsvrc.org/podcasts. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources at nsvrc.org.