The Blue Bench Youth Engagement Program

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A nonprofit fundraiser supporting

The Blue Bench

Why donate? Donations support our program's ability to get more youth involved. With your help, youth can identify creative and effective

$3,061

raised by 19 people

$1,000 goal


The Blue Bench is Denver metro's only comprehensive sexual assault prevention, care, and advocacy center. We are members of the Youth Engagement Program (housed within The Blue Bench's Prevention and Education department), which is a youth-led group that strives to create awareness about sexual violence and increase belief for survivors' experiences by educating allies (and those who are not yet allies). We fight cultural norms around sexual violence through advocacy and ruckus raising - meaning we encourage teens to talk about how we can prevent sexual violence and support survivors. The Youth Engagement Program is way for us to connect with other youth who care and want to make a difference.

Last school year, for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we created campaigns in our schools and decorated jeans to wear on Denim Day. We wore our denim because it shows it is normal to be open about the issue and shows survivors that people want them to feel safe to talk about it. At The Blue Bench's annual fundraiser, we spoke about the need for middle-schoolers and high-schoolers to have access to education about sexual violence and skills for helping our friends.

Along with The Blue Bench Prevention staff, we have co-facilitated evidence-based sexual violence prevention curriculum to talk about positive bystander intervention. The Youth Engagement Program gives us a voice to make a difference through projects like co-facilitating prevention programs for our peers. By building our own knowledge and skills through the program, we have become more confident to speak up about consent and what is wrong and right with our peers - or anyone. As a group, we have been increasing our communities' recognition of behaviors that are sexually violent and discussing what people can say or do to help prevent them from happening. The more that sexual violence is talked about, the less stigma that survivors face when disclosing their experiences, so we are also creating safer places for survivors.

We are elevating youth voices on this topic to share strategies, goals and successes in preventing sexual violence.

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The Blue Bench

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