Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury

Outreach & Education

Safe Haven is the leading voice on domestic and sexual violence in the Greater Waterbury area, with over forty years of experience providing comprehensive services. Prevention education, outreach and awareness of domestic and sexual violence are crucial to building a safer community. We believe strongly in being a part of the solution and to provide prevention, intervention and postvention services we need you to connect with us. Our advocate educators would love to come to your event and work with you to create an interactive learning experience. To schedule a speaking engagement, training or workshop, or request materials, contact us to learn how we can work with your organization.

Education

Safe Haven Educators work with students and schools to prevent and understand violence. Pre-K to 12 program content is available which is drawn from violence prevention curricula. Educators go classroom to classroom, using age appropriate curricula to engage students in conversations about personal body safety, boundaries, consent, and how to seek help from a trusted adult. Students, teachers, and the community learn skills to create loving and positive relationships. For more information, see a listing of some of our programs for schools.

Prevention

Advocates are trained to provide comprehensive, evidence-based programming designed to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Principles include promotion of positive individual, relationship, community, societal attitudes and behaviors. Facilitating conversations on how to promote safety, respect and community. Our Prevention Educators are available to discuss your needs and a create plan with you to implement prevention practices in your organization.

Principles of Safe Haven Prevention Plan

Parent and Guardian workshops

Provide parental awareness and knowledge about teen dating violence, create opportunity for changing parent communication skills around teen violence and provide skills to help parents help their teens resolve relationship conflict.

Social emotional learning for children

Promote expectations for mutually respectful, caring, non-violent relationships among young people and work with youth to help them develop social-emotional skills such as empathy, respect, and healthy communication and conflict resolution skills.

Bystander empowerment

Promotion of social norms that are protective against violence and empower and encourage people to intervene to prevent violence when they see it. Participants in bystander empowerment and education programs learn specific strategies on how to intervene.

Organizational Safety Assessment and Implementation Plan

Foster protective environments in the workplace through the creation of organizational policies and practices that promote safety and encourage help-seeking behavior. Raising awareness about Partner Violence and Sexual Violence, and working with administrators to develop policies on how incidents can be reported.

Prevention Programs Available

Coaching Boys Into Men and Coaching Girls To Leaders

Coaching Boys Into Men and Coaching Girls To Leaders are violence prevention programs developed by Futures Without Violence and Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence for athletic coaches to inspire them to teach their young athletes about the importance of respect for themselves and others. Athletic coaches play an extremely influential and unique role in the lives of young athletes. Because of these relationships, coaches are poised to positively influence how young people think and behave, both on and off the field. CBIM is an evidence-based prevention program that trains and motivates high school coaches to teach their young athletes healthy relationship skills and that violence never equals strength. Both programs are specifically developed for coaches to be easily incorporated into regular coaching strategy and practice sessions. Over the course of a season, CBIM coaches lead their players through brief weekly activities that address themes such as personal responsibility, respectful behavior, relationship abuse, consent, and resilience. Participating coaches receive a set of 12 training cards, each with a weekly topic and guidance for discussion.

Girls Circle

A structured support group for girls and gender-expansive youth from 9-18 years which integrates relational theory, resiliency practices, and skills training. Designed to increase positive connection, strengths, and competence in girls.

The Council

A strengths-based group approach to promote boys’ and young men’s safe and healthy passage through pre-teen and adolescent years. In this structured environment, boys and young men gain the vital opportunity to address masculine definitions and behaviors and build capacities to find their innate value and create good lives-individually and collectively.

Safe Dates

Safe Dates is a school-based prevention program for middle and high school students designed to stop or prevent the initiation of dating violence victimization and perpetration, including the psychological, physical, and sexual abuse that may occur between youths involved in a dating relationship. The program goals are to change adolescent norms on dating violence and gender-roles, improve conflict resolution skills for dating relationships, promote victims’ and perpetrators’ beliefs in the need for help and awareness of community resources for dating violence, encourage help-seeking by victims and perpetrators, and develop peer help-giving skills.

Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury

Community Workshops

Parent Workshops

Are you up to date in the current technology? Want to know how to connect to your teen on a deeper level? Or Do you want tips on how to teach your child resiliency or communication skills? We can help with these questions and more.

Topic Based

Do you have an interest in a current event regarding domestic or sexual violence?  There are a number of topics and issues pertaining to the field of domestic and sexual violence. A typical presentation will present current information on the topic and facilitate a discussion

Community Organizations–Adults

Our advocates work with many local community groups to provide workshops for their clients or their employees. Please contact us for more information.

Community Organizations/Summer Programs

Advocates are available to facilitate workshops and talking circles designed to strengthen resiliency, and to build positive communication. Workshops use group discussion, role play, video and interactive activities.

School Based

Youth engagement activities both during school hours and in after-school programs to promote youth leadership to take concrete action to stop violence and bullying within their peer communities.

Film or Television Screening

Learn about different sexual or domestic violence topics through watching a film with your community. Advocates will then lead the group in dialogue around the events that occurred in the film or television show.

Teens

Advocates are available to facilitate workshops and talking circles designed to strengthen resiliency, and to build positive communication. Workshops use group discussion, role play, video and interactive activities.

Professional Training

Intensive training for professionals and paraprofessionals about the complex dynamics of domestic/family/intimate partner violence/abuse and sexual violence, appropriate intervention, legal recourse, safety planning and prevention strategies. Community Educators are expertly trained in trauma-informed service delivery, state and federal domestic violence and sexual assault-related policies, crisis counseling and response, and the impacts of domestic and sexual violence on the people affected. No matter the size of your group or your budget, the team at Safe Haven can create a training that is tailored to meet your needs. We’ve trained educators; social workers; elementary, middle, high school and college students; medical providers; college administrators; police officers; social service providers; and, many others.

Awareness Collaboration

Save Haven provides services in 13 cities and towns filled with a multitude of different communities. Each community has unique needs when it comes to addressing and preventing domestic and sexual violence, and we want to work with you. Through community events, health fairs, media advocacy, and material distribution you can make a difference.

Clothesline Project

A powerful visual display designed to bear witness to victims and survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Survivors and secondary survivors (friends, family members, etc.) are given the opportunity to share their story, their feelings, and their experiences by decorating t-shirts to add to the display.  Advocates can be present for the duration of the project to explain it to community members, discuss the realities of sexual and domestic violence, and provide resources and information about services.  The Clothesline Project can bed is played on a large or small scale, on its own, or alongside other events.

Spoken Word

A word-based performance in the form of poetry, rhymes, repetition, and improvisation. Done mostly live in-person with an audience. The speaker(s) engage in self-expression, by telling theirs or another’s story on a particular topic. The focus is on the sounds and flow of the words, word placement and body movement to bring together a story from the speaker’s point of view or interpretation. The speaker(s) may use art, painting while performing, music, movements, dance or sounds with their performance to connect and have the audience engage emotionally with the story being told.

Outreach

We are present at community events, health fairs, and more, to spread information about our services. To schedule a table or booking at your event please contact us. Our team can also provide brochures, resources, and other materials for your organization. Materials can be placed in waiting rooms, the walls of schools or other public places, the offices of clergy, the bathrooms of corporations, and resource tables at community organizations.

Consultation

No one has all the answers, especially when looking at the complexities people often experience around abuse and trauma. Our Advocacy Team is here for you. If you are a professional or a concerned friend or family member and want to know how to help someone who is experiencing domestic and/or sexual violence, you can call us to provide individualized technical assistance.