NTU Celebrates Sexual Violence Awareness Week
NTU celebrates Sexual Violence Awareness Week after Year-Long Successes
Nottingham Trent University, in partnership, with Nottingham Trent Students’ Union launched our fourth annual campaign week to support the national Sexual Abuse & Sexual Violence Awareness Week on 1st February 2021. This is an annual opportunity to raise awareness about sexual violence, celebrate the accomplishments of our student volunteers who facilitate consent training, and increase student awareness of support. This year the campaign week focused on offering disclosure training to staff, launching 4 new videos on consent scenarios, promoting survivor stories written by students, and hosting a panel with fellow Consent Coalition partners on busting myths around reporting sexual violence to the police. We are pleased to announce that we engaged 30% more staff and students compared to last year’s campaign.
The campaign week follows a successful year for NTU in our dedication to preventing and responding to sexual violence. In June 2020, NTU and NTSU were invited to present about our accomplished consent programme at the UCL Tackling Sexual Harassment conference. In addition, NTU was also invited that same month to present about our work with the Consent Coalition at the annual AMOSSHE conference. Following this, in November 2020, NTU won the Times Higher Education award for Outstanding Student Support, for our sexual violence prevention and response work. Finally, in February 2020, NTU leadership approved mandatory consent workshops for all incoming undergraduate students, that will launch in the 2021/2022 academic year, after a Covid-19 delay.
NTU is proud that our various successes are not isolated and much of our work is done in partnership with the Consent Coalition members, especially Nottingham Trent Students’ Union. We also note that a large number of students help shape the work through facilitating consent workshops; reviewing content in our workshops and videos; organising support groups for their peers; and sharing their stories on social media platforms and in our blogs. We thank all of our partners in their commitment to allowing us to continue to work towards a safer university for all of our students. We look forward to continuing this work; including the wider distribution of the consent programme, exploring an anonymous reporting platform, and continuing our work with the Consent Coalition.
