0:00:01.0 Louis Marvin: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, an understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Louis Marvin, and I'm a project coordinator at the NSVRC. NSVRC is a division of respect together. This episode is part of a series on partnerships that reach and support men who are survivors of sexual violence today. Jayvon Howard is joining me to talk about an example of an effective partnership from when he worked at a local program. Jayvon is now the manager of Engaging Men Initiatives at the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence.

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0:00:56.8 LM: Hi, Jayvon, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself and about your work at the Ohio Alliance.

0:01:04.9 Jayvon Howard: Hey Louie. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you this afternoon. Yes, so I am the Manager of Engaging Men Initiatives with the Ohio Alliance and Sexual Violence. My pronouns are he, him, his, I wanted to make sure I put that in there as well. So, my role with the Alliance, I mainly do a lot of work where I'm doing the training and technical assistance, providing training and information resources on how to serve men who are survivors of sexual violence. So that's doing like survivor advocacy training and also engaging men around violence prevention. I wear a lot of many hats. So with my role, I do a lot of different things, but mostly I provide those trainings. I do podcasts episodes, like you have me here today and I'm happy to be a part of this one.

0:01:57.8 JH: Resources on the Go is one of my favorite ones to tune into. I do public trainings and speaking engagements helping discuss and get the word out about male survivorship. A lot of folks don't recognize that men can be survivors of sexual violence, so I do a lot of public speaking about that. We help create products and resources to give to rape crisis centers throughout the state of Ohio as well. So that's a little bit of what I do with my work. I'm a little bit about myself. I'm a writer. I often refer to myself as a Warrior Sorcerer. You might hear me say that in a couple of different places. I'm an artist, I like to paint. I don't know what else to say about myself. I'm not always very good at answering that question, but thank you for having me here.

0:02:50.0 LM: Thanks Jayvon, for telling us a little bit about yourself. And I know I'm a big fan of your work in Ohio. You're doing great stuff there. And I also know that before you worked at the Ohio Alliance, you worked at a local program as an LGBTQIA Outreach Advocate, and that in the course of that work, you provided services in person at a youth homeless shelter. So could you tell us about what went into providing those services? What was beneficial about going to the shelter to provide those services and who received those services? 

0:03:27.2 JH: Yes, I would love to talk about this. So this was one of my first positions of doing like full outreach with a local program. So the thing about doing outreach is the main model of that is really like being present and meeting people where they are. So this, well, I say this, I'm not sure if it's like a service program. I'm not sure which word would be the better way they're describing it, but the way that it was designed is that essentially my position was a co-located position. So this goes into a little bit about what best practices look like when we're trying to design partnerships such as this one where it is best to meet people where they are. We want to remove barriers for survivors as much as possible especially if we're talking about youth homeless shelters.

0:04:16.4 JH: And so I wanna clarify when we're saying a youth homeless shelter, we are talking about emerging adulthood and emerging adults. So the shelter only served 18-24 year olds, so that's the population that we were working with. And so they're young. Many of them were in the shelter because they were maybe kicked out of their home. They were running, they were runaways. Maybe they aged out of foster care. Some of them maybe were in between jobs. They didn't have resources to rely on with family, and so they didn't necessarily have those resources to live independently. And so those were typically the populations that we were working with. And so these folks don't have those resources to get to services. If they were experiencing violence they may not have known about these type of resources that they existed.

0:05:11.3 JH: They wouldn't know about protection orders. They wouldn't know about how to navigate the court system. These are really young folk. They're folks that aren't connected to these systems, maybe are connected to the systems, but don't know how to navigate them typically we'll give them a phone number to call and they get sent to one organization to talk to. And another organization, another organization. And many of them didn't even have phones. And so the way that this program was designed was that with this position about I would say maybe two times a week I would spend part of my time positioned and stationed at the youth homeless shelters, provide our services that I would typically provide to survivors who are adults with our, at the office. So those services were like talking with folks on the hotline, helping folks navigate the court system, providing support group services one-on-one intervention, helping with safety planning doing like landlord advocacy, all of those things. So rather than folks having to come all the way downtown or navigate and find their way, I was there at the shelter twice a week. And so, yeah, that's what those services looks like.

0:06:25.6 LM: Thanks for going through that and describing that. And I appreciate you talking about the age, the age range specifically, because sometimes we say youth and that might mean a lot of different things. And so you are working with 18-24 year olds. And in the project that I work on, we're talking about men.

0:06:45.1 LM: So adult men, and so we could maybe think of the group you were working with as young adults in certain context too. Definitely a relevant story and model for the larger project that we're talking about in terms of reaching and working with men, and you touched on aspects of the partnership already, and of course, our series, our podcast series that we're doing is about forming partnerships and what effective partnerships look like in terms of reaching and engaging men and clearly, of course, in order to do that work and in order for our listeners to maybe do something similar in their own communities, you've got to have that partnership in place, so tell us a little bit more about how you got the group started and just what went into forming and maintaining that relationship with the shelter where you were doing these two days a week, going on site to provide these services? 

0:07:56.4 JH: Yeah. So, partially, the relationship was already established beforehand. So, there's a couple layers to how, these partnerships were kind of formed. So, the first layer of it was leadership. So, it speaks to the importance of the involvement of leadership and having leadership buy-in with any programming and trainings and partnerships that you are really trying to design and implement. None of this really would have been possible without the leadership between both of programs, the youth shelter and the program I was working at for them to collaborate together at that top end as well. Designing the position, designing how many hours was appropriate for their advocate to be also co-located at another agency and space. Like, who would be the supervisor and report into what? What kind of policy and procedures would be appropriate? So, that way, we're able to provide proper services. And so, there's that level of leadership involvement that came into play that was necessary.

0:09:06.4 JH: That kind of happened outside my scope of what I was doing and it was kind of done before I arrived there. Part of the ways that we put together this partnership was, needing, a space where I could actually meet with the young folks. So, we had to come together and go through like a tour of the building and start identifying ways that we could utilize different spaces and different rooms. There's sometimes a challenge of maintaining confidentiality. So, we have to work together a lot around that as a small, a lot of, so the way it was like, a lot of them lived together in the same building. They were coming and going. But everyone who I connected with, so I would intentionally, when I would come twice a week, try to spend some time with them while they're at the shelter, even when I wasn't necessarily like running a support group. So, that's one of the other ways that we've developed that partnership. We started a support group as a way of having us stay connected as well.

0:10:07.3 JH: So, it's like we designed different specific services that would be necessary. So, we have to identify that. What were the needs that the student, not the students, I'll say students, what were the needs that the youth were needing? And really, it's like coming together in meetings multiple times. It's good to keep that outreach going, building those relationships, really trying to identify what things we have in common. All of this work is intersectional and overlapping. What to do when, there are survivors in the shelter, and they're also living with the perpetrators in the shelter, like having those types of discussions on how do we, even rearrange or design the way that we have homeless shelters to ensure safety for folks who are there. I hope that answered your question. I'm sure there's more I could get into. I want to make sure that I'm not going off on too much of a tangent.

0:11:03.5 LM: Oh yeah, this is all good. You were sharing such great and practical tips for advocates who might want to get something like this started in their community, and that's definitely, a goal of these conversations is for people to hear something and hopefully for that to spark, an idea of how to form a new partnership or how to improve an existing partnership. And, every relationship like the one you're describing is going to be specific to the community that it's serving. And so it won't look exactly the same somewhere else, but we know that there are lots of things to learn about good examples of these kinds of partnerships. So I think everything you're saying is super helpful to probably a lot of different listeners.

0:11:52.4 JH: That's perfect. I wanted to also add that I wasn't the only co-located person at the shelter. So this, again, like, leadership among like different organizations across the city. So, there was other agencies that were also co-located. So they were, we would have like some sort of like triage in a sense. Like even though we wouldn't necessarily collaborate with one another across agencies, we all did collaborate together at the shelter. And so it made it a really good way of removing practical barriers for folks living in the shelter, being able to access services. You can think about that or applying that to any kind of population that might be struggling to come to your building. Maybe because of confidentiality, they're worried that someone might see them utilizing your services. What does it look like to build a partnership where, somewhere else that they might go that might feel more anonymous or confidential. So things like that.

0:12:57.5 LM: Yeah. I love that. Those are all great thoughts. And you said something earlier about, was it landlord advocacy, I think is what you said, one of the things that you provided. Could you talk about what that looked like? I think that that is something, really exciting to think about in terms of people who are working at rape crisis centers and how they might go about offering that to survivors. So what did landlord advocacy look like for you in that role? 

0:13:31.5 JH: Yeah. So with working with these folks, landlord advocacy, often trying to provide like as much comprehensive safety planning to survivors as possible. So helping them, break leases. If they're a part of a lease, helping them get their, like a co-signer, helping them figure out opportunities to find housing at the shelter. Folks are already like working with a caseworker or as some sort of social worker they probably were working with to help them do more of that detailed work of finding stable, independent housing for themselves. But as an advocate, I was able to help them navigate some of those systems as well. So giving them some information about like what to expect, how to find and shop for an apartment. Sometimes if folks were maybe at the beginning, maybe living in an apartment and that's where they experienced violence and abuse. And the reason why that they're now in the shelter is because they're, seeking safe shelter, giving them some tips for safety planning for going back home, safety planning for maybe if they're that person who, that their abuser is someone that's living with them, how to get that person maybe evicted, get in protection orders, that type of nature.

0:14:56.3 JH: How to talk with their landlord and property manager, because sometimes there's, instances, many instances where there might be violence in an apartment. And because you might complain about it or file a police report or call the police, landlords might take that as a problem or issue for their property. And they might have, they might evict you or break your lease for both parties. And so sometimes that landlord advocacy could look like talking to the landlord and explaining to them what trauma is and talking to them what sexual violence or domestic violence looks like, talking to them about like the importance of like safety in the home and, what, like those types of things. And so those types of conversations were pretty helpful to provide that type of advocacy when folks were trying to figure those types of things out with their property manager. There's so many different layers to it. I don't want to miss anything, but I also want to pause in case you had any more follow-up questions.

0:15:57.4 LM: No, that's great. I really appreciate that you did that work and that you're talking about it in the context of, yeah, of being an advocate at a rape crisis center. I think there are possibly, some listeners who might think of that work specifically as in the domain of like the case manager, like you said. So I just think that's great to reframe and to see the role that an advocate from a rape crisis center can bring to that level of advocacy. And like you said, talking about the trauma of sexual violence as one way of providing that advocacy. So I hope that people are hearing that and going, wow, that's a great idea.

0:16:40.5 JH: Yeah. Yeah. That's like, that took up most of what the advocacy would be, would be having conversations. You're sort of like a mediator in a sense, sometimes, explaining to the landlord, like, it's like, it's not that simple that they were not just fighting, this was domestic violence and this is what domestic violence is. This is what it looks like. And this is different ways that it shows up. Like, and so, yeah, let's hopefully like folks hear that this is a great way to be able to safety plan with the survivor.

0:17:10.2 LM: Thanks. And I know that groups were also part of your advocacy work in this partnership. Could you talk about just like the structures of the groups? What did those groups look like? 

0:17:24.1 JH: Yeah. So that year, when I was an advocate was the year of support groups. I had so many support groups I was facilitating at the time. I had the one at the youth homeless shelter. I had a couple at the justice center, at the jail, there was the LGBTQIA group as well. So that was the year of my groups. A lot of them were structured very similarly. So the way that I would do it at the shelter, there was about once a week, I think it was maybe Thursday, I think it was like Tuesday, Thursday. We would have the time, I would have my flyers that I created and set up throughout the shelter. So folks were aware of the group and the time, what room we were meeting in. And if I had a particular theme or topic that I wanted us to kind of get into, and that would be based off of what I was basically here, got them gossip about, or what we discussed in the previous group, I would maybe set the theme around those types of things around like consent, around healthy relationships.

0:18:31.4 JH: We would talk about hygiene and things like that, like whatever that they needed to kind of focus on to help get us in some of the conversations they needed to talk about around trauma. And so I would have those flyers. We'd meet about once a week for about an hour, hour and a half. I read it as a peer led group. And so I would be facilitator to kind of bring the group together. We would ground and center around the topic. We would do temperature checks. So it was like, I'll ask them what the rain cloud was or something like that. And they get them started on talking about things that they had going on and what their sun, their rainbow was, or the sun, sunny thing was. So I think that's going really well for them, something that's not going so well. And then we start getting into it. And that was pretty effective for them to get talking. Yeah. So I think that's the main structure for it. We facilitated sometimes like more, I would say...

0:19:36.0 JH: Informal kind of spaces as well. So not necessarily support groups where we'll have them coming together and trying to help them sort of like discuss deep problems and solve problems. But sometimes we'd also break from that and do more of like a social kind of space where they can kind of just like hang out and be more vulnerable together versus like, when they're out in the greater space where they don't really know each other, they kind of have had like contact with one another in certain kind of spaces, but they ended up pulling them together to have the social space as well was pretty beneficial for me to build trust with them, for them to understand me, someone that they could work with. I also wanna note that I was, I think 23 or 24 at the time when I was doing this. So there was also that level where I had to kind of like connect with them a certain way so they understood me as a service provider and not just another person in the shelter.

0:20:33.2 LM: That's really helpful, and I wanna make sure I'm framing this a little bit for our listeners. We're talking about partnerships that can help reach and provide services to men. And I think that probably the services that you're talking about were not gender specific but in the course of doing this partnership and in the course of having a relationship with the LGBTQIA young people at the shelter, you were serving people of all genders, including men. And so I think that's a really important way to think about this because sometimes when we're in a space when we're talking about like, what are services for men it's easy to kind of consider those as gender-specific or like only for men, but no, that in fact does not have to be like that. The groups that you're describing right now, for example, I assume were all genders, men, women, non-binary, young people. And so, yeah, I don't know if you want to say anything more about that, but like, I think that's really cool and intentional that here, we're talking about working with men, but we're not talking about only working with men or having like a gender segregated space necessarily.

0:21:54.9 JH: Yeah, that's a good observation. Yeah, many of the spaces were open to all genders to join. I think that's something that a lot of folks maybe they shy away from when they're thinking about designing and building support groups for men is the idea that these groups can't be co-ed some rape crisis centers, many rape crisis centers already have some form of support group or ancillary service where they're providing some sort of social space or space for survivors to get together, process emotions, talk about different social emotional learning, healing, connect with each other, connect to services that men cannot be a part of those spaces too, if women are a part of those spaces or folks who are trans can't be a part of those spaces. If folks who are CIS are in those spaces and realistically everyone benefits the most when our spaces are more diverse.

0:22:50.9 JH: We learn more from one another. We see our own humanity better. We see each other's humanity better. We understand that these experiences, although not normal, and although prevalent are not unique, that you're not alone. That there are others who have had this experience, even people that you'd never imagine like, oh my gosh, like this person who was, there's a man who's big and buff and strong and like, looks like he can, he just eats weights all day can experience sexual violence or experience abuse and have his consent violated. Like these things are myths. Like, so like yeah, absolutely these spaces welcome all genders. Sometimes it was just a men's only space, but that wasn't necessarily on purpose or set to be that way. Sometimes it was just a men's only space. Sometimes it was just a women's only space and it's just depending on like who attended at the time. But yeah, I actually found the most success at having men join those spaces when they were multiple genders, and that was at the youth homeless shelter. Despite all the other support groups I had, that was the one where we had the most diversity.

0:24:06.4 LM: Yeah. Thanks for saying that. And speaking of the other support groups, I don't know, well, I know that your experience doing this group helped you kind of think about new models of doing other forms of outreach. And is, are those other support groups what you're talking about? Or is there more to those like launching those other models of doing different forms of outreach? Tell us a little bit more about that.

0:24:32.3 JH: A little bit. So it kind of gave, started the like a co-located model of building pipelines between agencies. So even though like, so I mentioned earlier that we... I was not the only one at that space who was co-located. And so although this was removing a lot of barriers for survivors to access services, it also created unintentional barriers on being able to provide services where we were all going back to different agencies and maybe we were working with one person and I was working with someone who was in a support group, and then we had someone else from a job or family services who was helping them with landlord work, working with this person as well, who's co-located, and then there's their case manager who was working with multiple folks who may not always be present. And so having those barriers sometimes and being able to stay connected to each other and have like a really fully fully comprehensive way of providing services wasn't always there. So the model that kind of came from that was like, what does it look like to build more of a pipeline.

0:25:47.8 JH: Where we aren't necessarily just like guessing where survivors need to go when they call one of our agencies, but we have maybe like a standard practice of like, hey, you are first line of defense of like, take good care of these needs for someone. And then we send you to the next agency and then we send you to this agency. And then we know that if we need training, we'll call these folks and they have advocates who are able to do that training. And so that ideal world, that's something that we already do. And in some degree, we are doing that. But sometimes folks just do not have the capacity with programs when they're smaller. Some programs only have like 4 or 5 advocates. And so saying like, let's build all of these systems between agencies might sound easy and simple, but it's not always that simple. But to know like, yeah, trying to build those pipelines where you have multiple points of contact at an agency, it's not just one person.

0:26:52.3 JH: The how you all work together, you're thinking about sustainability. So that with someone, the retention is kind of low on our field. Sometimes it's between two to three years. What happens when that advocate leaves and they've been working with these survivors or they've been running these support groups or they've been building these programs and developing these outreach pipelines and these networks with other agencies. It's like that one goes away so does that connection, so does that collaboration.

0:27:20.7 JH: So building that stronger foundation of outreach where we know as agencies we have each other's back and we know how we're going to have each other's back. And so that's kind of where I started working with that. I was pretty successful at creating those connections. It kind of put me into the track of training a bit closer because I got my foot in the door by providing trainings. That was my way of getting my foot in the door with agencies to build those pipelines. I will call, connect with multiple people and offer to train their full staff on services and then go from there.

0:27:55.1 LM: Great. So many great things I think that many different listeners can connect to maybe a new way of thinking about something they're already trying to do, or I think you're also offering things that a lot of people might be hearing for the first time. So really appreciate you reflecting on that work that you did in your old role and how the partnership wasn't just the partnership, it was all these other things too. It helped build your partnerships and relationships with more agencies and thinking of sustainability and those pipelines of outreach. So thanks for thinking back and walking us through how that all worked and how you saw it being effective. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about today with our listeners? 

0:28:49.6 JH: I would want to add to remember that, we all have something to offer. When you're thinking about building partnerships and connections that sometimes we might be discriminatory about who we feel like are able to provide us services, provide us valuable collaboration, and it's good to have discernment and it's very good to like know what your goals are and your objectives so that we're, because time is the most precious currency. We don't have time to just be doing anything and everything.

0:29:18.0 JH: But also to, remember that relationships are the most important thing about this work, that connecting with people is the most important thing about this work, and it's our collective humanity. And so all partnerships can be good partnerships. I believe in, and I've been working on this a little bit of decolonizing love. So essentially that you know even if partnerships are not such good partnerships, there is maybe... If there's room for transformation, find ways to transform those partnerships because at the end of the day our mission is to end violence, it is to serve survivors of violence, and so we owe it to them and to ourselves for a better society to allow for that room for transformation when necessary. So relationship building is critical and key. And so yeah, I just wanted to add that.

0:30:12.3 LM: Thanks. I think that's a perfect place to leave this conversation. Yeah, Thanks for this, Jayvon. This was great. It was really great to talk with you today. And to our listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of Resource On The Go. For more resources and information about understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual assault, visit our website at nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc-respecttogether.org.

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