Volume 23, Number 5 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | June 11 – 17, 2010
More about NYCAASA’s
Project Envision
The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault created “Project Envision,” a six-year-long initiative on the Lower East Side, Brooklyn and the South Bronx devoted to combating sexual violence, in 2007. The Lower East Side Coalition is made up of community volunteers and rape crisis specialists from local hospitals.
Heightening security in public facilities alone won’t eradicate sexual violence, said Jessica LaHood, Community Organizer for the Lower East Side Coalition, which launched a campaign in the first half of 2009 to come up with preventative measures of abuse. The coalition partnered with area hospitals in the city to seek out research subjects in the neighborhood.
According to the survey, 54 percent of those polled know someone who has been sexually assaulted, yet only 37 percent of them think it’s a problem on the Lower East Side. Nearly 50 percent of participants experienced some form of sexual violence after age 15, and about one-third of the participants have before age 15. Sexual abuse most frequently arises among intimate partners and is alcohol-facilitated, according to the research, and the assault victims are usually women.
The most effective way to counter sexual abuse, according to the Lower East Side community participants, is by educating and working with youth, both in and out of the classroom. Other popular strategies include group work with families and reducing alcohol and drug abuse.
Project Envision’s Lower East Side Coalition hopes to start a psycho-education workshop for families in the area by next January. “The goal is to make children and parents feel more comfortable to discuss issues of sexual violence,” LaHood said. Details of the program have yet to be finalized.
For more information, log onto https://www.svfreenyc.org/programs_prevention.html or contact Jessica LaHood at envision-les@svfreenyc.org.
