We’re excited to announce the name and logo of our Office of Women’s Health grant, previously known as Preventing HIV Infection in Women through Expanded IPV Prevention, Screening, and Response Services. Allow us to introduce you to The MORE Project, an initiative designed to:

• prevent HIV transmission, increase trauma-informed HIV screening and improve access to services for people living with HIV;

• reduce violence against women and support women to reduce harm from intimate partner violence (IPV); and,

• promote social norms that protect against IPV by engaging men in workshops and curricula examining traditional gender norms.

Borrowing from human centered design techniques, IWES’ COMMS team led staff in a brainstorm and discussion to devise the new name and key messaging. The MORE Project was chosen as a way to encompass the intersecting goals of the initiative, which aims to provide more knowledge, more HIV testing, more support, more options for women experiencing violence, more access to services, and ultimately, more ways to think about how we engage in both HIV prevention and violence prevention work. Through our work focusing on gender norms, we offer men brave spaces to explore more ways of defining their own masculinity, which they can share with—you guessed it—more men, to truly impact change. See below for highlights and lessons learned from our first two sessions, and look out for a page on our website soon to give you further insight into the work. Welcome to MORE.

Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Workshops

“It’s a cultural norm. It’s normal in New Orleans.” - IPV Awareness Workshop Participant on power, control and the abuse cycle.

This quarter the MORE team conducted two IPV Awareness Workshops in partnership with the New Orleans Family Justice Center (NOFJC) in June and July with male mentors and coaches. The primary goal of the workshop is to mobilize men and boys as allies to promote social norms that prevent violence among girls and women. Due to stay-at-home home orders, we had to re-envision our originally planned in-person sessions and transform them into a two-hour workshop implemented virtually with engaging activities and interactive discussions.

The mentors and coaches learned key statistics about IPV, how to recognize red flags of IPV among their mentees and athletes, and strategies to address disclosures of IPV to them by the youth they work with. Through feedback submitted after the sessions, participants reported that they gained valuable information that they can share with their networks of mentors, coaches, and community leaders. Sadly, the harmful behaviors exhibited in the scenarios and videos presented to highlight red flags were not uncommon in their work with youth. The workshop gave them some basic tools to understand how influential they are to help youth develop healthy relationships and reduce teen dating violence. They reported that they appreciated being able to engage in this kind of a discussion among men to process local IPV statistics with each other. They enjoyed the opportunity to collaboratively explore strategies to recognize red flags, using trauma-informed approaches.

The next workshop will be held on August 27, 2020 at 5:45 pm CT via Zoom (see flyer below). If you or anyone you know is a man who mentors or coaches young men and are interested in attending, please follow this link to register or email Christi La Mark.