Who Has the Power to Create Welcoming, Safe Communities?

By Jackie Fischer

Bullying.  Harassment.  Sexual violence.  We too frequently read or hear these violent phrases linked with children and incidents in our communities and schools.   These are serious problems; but, there is a solution to them:  create an intentionally welcoming environment in which people of all ages feel valued and safe.  

We don’t often stop to define qualities of welcoming environments and healthy relationships.   The cornerstones of healthy relationships - good communication skills, empathy, and responsibility - need to be fostered as critical skills and modeled throughout the community.  A number of Woodstock initiatives are putting these skills to work and are making a difference in our schools and community. A few examples include:

•  Woodstock Healthy Teens, an OCP and Wise of the Upper Valley project, is working with high school staff to conduct trainings focused on supporting good communication skills, empathy, and responsibility. They believe that these messages begin to develop in school, and need to be echoed throughout the community in order to provide a consistent and common message – and an explicit expectation of healthy relationships.
• SOS Peer Counseling at the WUHS is a well-established high school peer-to-peer counseling group.  SOS teens respectfully and non-judgmentally support their peers, through one-on-one conversations in school settings, thereby modeling healthy relationship behavior.
• Stand Up! is an experiential and interactive anti-bullying program at Woodstock Union Middle School designed to encourage empathy and accountability. Students are empowered to self-reflect and hold themselves accountable for their impact on their community.  They challenge themselves and fellow students to take responsibility for creating their community. The program is designed to empower students to stand up for themselves and others.
• The Youth Matter Community Collaborative works to create and support opportunities for young people to build relationships through community and civic engagement. OCP is one of the community partners of Youth Matter.
• The Woodstock Taskforce Against Domestic and Sexual Violence has the mission to engage all ages as catalysts in the community in order to transform attitudes and behaviors through understanding of domestic and sexual violence.  The aim is to educate and raise awareness of domestic and sexual violence; create a comprehensive community response; and promote healthy and respectful relationships.

These are only a few examples; there are other community and school groups that are intentionally nurturing healthy relationship skills.  If you know of one, or are involved with one, I’d love to hear from you about it. It’s the sort of good news that we can all use a little more of.  My email is jfischer@ocpvt.org and OCP’s phone number is 457-2679

In a time when children and young people are overexposed to interpersonal violence at every turn, in the news, in video games and movies, on television, even through music, it is more important than ever for friends, teachers, neighbors, parents to take time to model healthy, caring relationships.  Small actions can serve as a powerful balance, rather like an antidote, to the messages from our violence-saturated culture.  We can all learn from these community and school initiatives.  Stand Up!  Each one of us can, together, build healthy relationships and a strong thriving community.