Rowan House made a presentation at Westmount School yesterday.

The visit was part of their Preventative Education Program, which aims to educate local students on the traits of healthy and unhealthy relationships.

Though Rowan House mainly provides to support to women and children in crisis, the Preventative Education Program aims to educate younger people on how to identify abusive patterns in order to prevent future abuse.

Presentations are given to students in grades 2, 5, 8, and 11 in schools across the Foothills, covering both the Foothills School Division and Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools.

Ally Cramm, Community Relations Coordinator with Rowan House says the program highlights behavior that might not always appear to be abusive.

"Manipulation, emotional abuse, and power and control are huge things that youth are experiencing in the teenage years, and we want to work with them to help them figure out that things that might seem normal like texting all the time may not necessarily be healthy."

As well as catering language to the specific grades in question, Cramm says Rowan House is particular about how they portray abuse.

"While we recognize that abuse happens dis-proportionally towards women, it is also happening to men. We talk to the youth that abuse can happen to anyone regardless of their gender, and we use words like 'partner' versus 'women.'"

She says the presentations are tied in with the Alberta school curriculum.

"A lot of the things that we're talking about, the teacher have to be talking about anyway in Career and Life Management course and things like that, and having someone come in from outside the school to provide this information sometimes just sticks a little bit more with the students rather than the teachers trying to have dating conversations with the students on their own."

This will be the 10th year for the program, and the 20th for Rowan House.

The organization expects to hold 150 presentations to around 3700 students, which Cramm says is an early projection, and likely a low one.

 

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