The Change Project

The Social Innovation Research Group (SIRG) was hired to coordinate The Change Project, a collaboration between the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region (SASC), SIRG, the Centre for Women and Trans People*, the UW Women’s Centre, the Diversity and Equity Office at Laurier, and Wilfrid Laurier University. The seeds of this project grew out of a campus-community committee to address gendered violence that was struck at Laurier several years ago as a result of concerns about gendered violence on campus.

Objectives

The goal of The Change Project was to work towards ending gendered violence on campus through transforming the institutional and cultural climate of the university community. The project aimed to meet the following objectives:

• Engage stakeholders as participants to encourage multiple perspectives and to facilitate relationship building between various actors within the academic community.
• Identify the nature and extent of the problem and the variables at each ecological level that impact the problem.
• Assess institutional response and prevention efforts and discern gaps/needs to address the problem.
• Develop evidence-informed recommendations for institutional and community-level changes to prevent future gendered violence against students and better respond to and support those who have experienced, or who are experiencing, gendered violence.
• Develop and implement education, prevention, and action initiatives based on identified needs, assets, and promising practices.

The project was designed to meet the objectives through three types of activities: research, relationship building, and community engagement and action. The Project relied heavily on the involvement and leadership of students who were instrumental in initiating the project and who were involved in all aspects of the project. Over 600 students, faculty and community partners were surveyed and/or interviewed for this project. Eleven recommendations were shared with the leadership of Laurier which led to transformational changes in the way Laurier understands and deals with gendered violence on campus.

Outcomes

The Change Project is an excellent example of university-community collaboration between SASC and SIRG to work towards ending gendered violence on campus through transforming the institutional and cultural climate of Laurier.