Metadata
Title
Anti-Violence Education
Category
general
UUID
7fc900d006964976bfe5b0c29ccdb083
Source URL
https://csndr.harvard.edu/anti-violence-education
Parent URL
https://csndr.harvard.edu/report-concern-ndab
Crawl Time
2026-03-09T03:30:07+00:00
Rendered Raw Markdown
# Anti-Violence Education

**Source**: https://csndr.harvard.edu/anti-violence-education
**Parent**: https://csndr.harvard.edu/report-concern-ndab

# Anti-Violence Education

SHARE Team

Confidential

**Whether for your own learning, to support a peer, or for an assignment, research, or professional project, we invite you to learn more.** The information on this page can serve as a foundation to learn more about the frameworks, movements, and foundations of healing and preventing violence.

Survivors and allies have been leaders in anti-violence movements, creating communities of scholars, practitioners, and activists who are organizing to transform culture toward healing and violence prevention. The work that the SHARE Team does is built on the advocacy, labor, love, and history of those who have come before us.

If you have ideas or suggestions about anti-violence education resources, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at [CommunitySupport\_SHARE@harvard.edu](mailto:CommunitySupport_SHARE@Harvard.edu)\

---

## Power-Based Interpersonal Violence (PBIV)

Sexual assault, stalking, abusive relationships, and identity-based harm(s) are often talked about as unrelated to one another. Yet, we know that these forms of interpersonal violence are all rooted in power and control. One way of describing this is through the term power-based interpersonal violence.

### Power and Control

The power and control wheel was originally created by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, Minnesota. The image was created to visually describe a pattern of behaviors and tactics used by one person(s) to have power and control over another person(s).

The information inside of the circle describes behavior that might be continual, occurring over time. The information along the outside of the circle describes systemic harm that contributes to and reinforces the interpersonal harm.

This behavior can occur in various types of relationships, such as familial, romantic, academic, professional, and social, and may be an attempt to maintain control over a person.

This image describes behavior that includes sexual assault, childhood sexual violence, sexual harassment, stalking, abusive relationships, and discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

If you or someone who you know has experienced power-based interpersonal violence and is looking for support or has questions, there are [many resources available](https://csndr.harvard.edu/options-and-resources-share).

---

## Supporting Survivors

There are many ways to support someone who has experienced power-based interpersonal violence.

At the interpersonal level, these practices can include things such as:

- Pausing to take a breath and grounding yourself first. Learning that someone has experienced power-based interpersonal violence may raise a lot of your own complex feelings. This is understandable.
- Naming the power dynamics including the power you have and recognizing the survivor is the expert in their experience and what they need
- Previewing anything you might do and be predictable. Follow through on the things you offer. For example, if they want to call to check-in, remember to make the phone call.
- Prioritizing the choice, agency, and consent of the person who experienced the harm.
- Honoring their boundaries
- Normalizing common responses such as shock or numbness, mistrust, irritability, anger, anxiety or feeling on eggshells, sadness, tearful, shame, or changes in eating and sleeping habits.
- Offering options and resources
- Practicing your own care

Whether the harm happened recently or in the past, healing is rarely linear and does not have a timeline. It is important for the person(s) to know that they are believed.

Additionally, choice and self-determination are central tenants of healing. Supporting a person’s decisions, even if they are different from the ones you might make, is one of the important ways you can demonstrate your care.

Healing is communal and relational. Supportive, trustworthy relationships are an important way of offering care. You do not have to do everything. Being able to show up consistently and predictably for the long-term can make a big impact.

At the systemic level, these practices can include things such as:

- Growing your own knowledge and understanding through attending trainings and workshops, reading, listening to podcasts, etc.
- Getting involved to support survivors
- Engaging in prevention efforts
- Supporting change at a practice and policy level

To learn more or collaborate with the SHARE Team about a workshop or program related to how to support a peer, visit the[Community Outreach and Culture Change page](https://csndr.harvard.edu/community-outreach-and-culture-change-share)or email [CommunitySupport\_SHARE@harvard.edu](mailto:CommunitySupport_SHARE@Harvard.edu)\
 \
We‘d love to connect with you.

---

## Trauma

Trauma is a word that some may use to describe the impacts of power-based interpersonal violence on people’s body, spirit, community, psyche, and worldview that can overwhelm someone’s capacity to cope.

Trauma is the body’s response to an incident or a series of incidents that threaten someone’s physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological safety. This may result in a person’s body automatically and unconsciously engaging in self-protection and survival mechanisms/strategies.

The ongoing impact of this can exhaust, overwhelm, and at times limit someone’s access to choice. This could look like loneliness, isolation, generational trauma, health disparities, chronic pain, impacts on one’s mental health, anxiety (or hypervigilance), numbness or exhaustion, less desire to trust in relationships, and impacts on the relationship with one’s own body and self.

Often, healing these patterns could include attempts to access safety and belonging in one’s body, community, and relationships.

### Trauma-Informed Support Practices

Trauma-informed practices are a way to embody the opposite principles of trauma in an effort to restore bodily autonomy, agency, choice, and consent. These practices are guided by the values of:

- Safety
- Trustworthiness and Transparency
- Choice
- Collaboration
- Empowerment
- Addressing Cultural and Historical Trauma  \

Trauma-informed practices:

- Understand and consider the range of impacts trauma has on a person or community’s physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being
- Recognize that there are many paths toward healing and recovery
- Foster practices and environments that take these impacts into consideration, instead of practices that are re-traumatizing

The paradigm shifts the conversation from “what is wrong with you” to understanding “what has happened?” \

To read further:

- [Healing Justice is More than Words on a Page](https://nexuscp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Healing-report_for-print-FINAL-6.19.17.pdf)

To learn more or collaborate with the SHARE Team about a workshop or program related to understanding the impacts of trauma and trauma-informed practices, visit the[Community Outreach and Culture Change page](https://csndr.harvard.edu/community-outreach-and-culture-change-share)or email [CommunitySupport\_SHARE@harvard.ed](mailto:CommunitySupport_SHARE@harvard.ed)[u](CommunitySupport_SHARE@harvard.edu)\
We‘d love to connect with you.  \

(Informed by SAMSHA, 2014; Fallot & Harris, 2009; Haines, 2019)

---

## Restorative and Transformative Practices

Restorative justice (RJ) is a philosophy, world view, and set of consent-based practices that focuses on relationships, needs, and impact. RJ draws from Indigenous traditions of peacemaking and ceremonial Circle processes that are designed to build trust, foster collective decision-making, strengthen community relationships, and address harm by considering people’s needs.

When harm happens, restorative justice practitioners ask what support folks need to make things right. In this framework, justice is achieved when the people impacted by harm are able to get what they need.  Many RJ practitioners also believe that a key part of their work is to transform the systems that contribute to harm.

Transformative Justice (TJ) is an approach to addressing harm that emerged from restorative justice movements. Transformative Justice interventions seek to prevent and respond to violence by transforming the social conditions that enable harm. Practitioners saw a need to differentiate TJ from RJ due to the coercive dynamics that are often present when RJ is practiced in an institutional context. Unlike Restorative Justice, Transformative Justice explicitly avoids engaging with state and carceral systems as part of its approach.

### What we mean by accountability

Restorative approaches to addressing harm draw from Indigenous practices and worldviews that emphasize:

- consent-based decision making
- the centrality of community building as a foundation for restoration,
- the interconnectivity of all life.

In this framework, justice and accountability are achieved when the needs of all people involved are met. In addition, this approach seeks to establish accountability by strengthening community relationships so that people treat each other with care and respect.

To learn more:

- [Creative Interventions Toolkit](https://www.creative-interventions.org/toolkit/)
- Building Accountability Video Series
  - [What is Accountability?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZuJ55iGI14)
  - [What are Obstacles to Accountability?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRhoaRlyeq8)\

### Working toward the goal of restorative practices

The SHARE Team offers proactive support around community building to help people create healthier relationships that make harm less likely to occur. When harm happens, we work with people to help them identify their needs and build a web of supportive social connections that enable accountability. We draw from understandings of justice that include restorative justice, transformative justice, and trauma-informed principles for engaging with people.

To learn more about getting support from the Restorative Practitioner, visit the [Accountability Support page](https://csndr.harvard.edu/accountability-support)or email [RestorativePractices\_SHARE@harvard.edu](mailto:RestorativePractices_SHARE@Harvard.edu)

To learn more or collaborate with the SHARE Team about a restorative practices, visit our [Community Outreach and Culture Change page](https://csndr.harvard.edu/community-outreach-and-culture-change-share)or email [RestorativePractices\_SHARE@harvard.edu](mailto:RestorativePractices_SHARE@Harvard.edu)\
 \
We‘d love to connect with you.

## Contact SHARE Team

Confidential

Office phone number: [(617) 496-5636](tel:6174965636)\
24/7 Confidential Hotline: [(617) 495-9100](tel:6174959100)

Email: [CommunitySupport\_SHARE@harvard.edu](mailto:CommunitySupport_SHARE@Harvard.edu)