Learning is Healing “When we know better, we do better”

We gratefully acknowledge Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) for funding this project as part of the Government of Canada’s response to gender-based violence (GBV) and the particular gendered impacts of stressors such as COVID-19 in order to build evidence and capacity for communities to prevent and address sexual violence and to develop educational resources to shockproof communities in adva. [...] While targeted groups experience the deepest harms, the cultivation of callousness among the privileged and the downtrodden is an enduring form of self- and mutual harm that diminishes the humanity of all parties complicit with or directly involved in the reproduction of violence. [...] COVID-19 is important to the study in two ways: 1) COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated the conditions that produce vulnerabilities to sexual violence and has created and demonstrated even more deeply the need for the education and training at the heart of this initiative; 2) COVID-19 has added barriers to education and training initiatives. [...] However, existing anti-trafficking policies typically “reduce the scope of discussions to securing national borders and ‘clamping down’ on trafficking as organised crime,” an approach which contributes to the “[severing] of the link between the crime of human trafficking and the everyday life of the majority” (p. [...] The efficacy of sexual violence education can be increased through the promotion of sexual well-being over the prevention of worst outcomes, particularly if the material has a skill-building component and includes content related to the promotion of positive behaviours.