The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center was founded in 1973 and is the only comprehensive rape crisis center in the Greater Boston area. It provides free, confidential support and services to survivors of sexual violence ages 12 and up, as well as their family and friends. They work with survivors of all genders, and help survivors seek justice in ways that are meaningful to them. In addition to meeting the needs of survivors in crisis, they assist them in navigating the health-care, criminal legal, social service, and school systems.

Vision: Sexual violence thrives when people exploit power over others. BARCC's vision is a society free of all forms of oppression, and therefore sexual violence does not exist. In this world, people only engage in sexual activity with their full will, happiness, and consent. Everyone is free to go about their daily lives knowing that their bodies, identities, minds, and spirits will always be valued and respected.

Ylc

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Youth Leadership Corps (YLC) is a group in which young leaders develop skills to become change agents and activists in their community. Youth ages 14–18 learn about and create projects to educate their community on issues of sexual violence prevention and healthy relationship promotion. Coco Co, the Youth Outreach Coordinator, is the backbone of the program. "Coco supports the BARCC Youth Leadership Corps’s training, team building, and community outreach. She works to build relationships with local middle and high schools and youth organizations, and she trains youth-serving adults on sexual violence prevention. She has experience working with public schools, educational nonprofits, and youth-serving organizations, and has a master of education degree in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education" (BARCC.) This lab group taught three lessons to the YLC group over the course of two weeks about the Intersection of BLM and #MeToo, the Geographies of Sexual Violence, and the Contexts of Rape Culture.

The Process

Every week we would meet with Coco through Zoom to breakdown the material we learned in lecture. We discussed ways to make larger concepts into more tangible discussions for the YLC students. We broke down the semester’s worth of learning into three lessons. First we created lesson plans tailored to the section of lesson. Then we visualized them by creating Google Slides for each tailored lesson. Lastly, we met the YLC through zoom and facilitated the lessons with the Google Slides.

What we learned

Through our collaboration with Coco and the YLC, we gained an understanding of how to effectively communicate and present the information learned in class. Despite already knowing how relevant and important the content is today, we were able to filter the most crucial aspects and facilitate meaningful conversation around them. We initially went into this project not knowing what to expect from the members of the YLC, but after the first lesson it became clear that we were there not to teach, but rather to facilitate. The members were active participants and enriched our understanding of the material by providing their own perspective. It was refreshing to see a group of young people so dedicated to these issues and passionate about making a change.

from the YLC

Lina (she/her) (Senior @ Brookline High School): The BC lab was particularly interesting because it was an opportunity to connect some of the work we had already been doing to BLM and MeToo, among other things. Our conversations with each other and the BC facilitators were really thoughtful and gave us an opportunity to dive beneath the surface of sexual violence prevention into more intersectional work. I am super grateful for Daniela, Fabiana, Kate, and Katherine for the work they put into these lessons!

Angel (she/her) (Junior @ John D. O'Bryant High School): I really enjoyed the videos and quizzes from each lesson. They were informative and eye opening, as well as were a great introduction to each specific topic/conversation. Something that I learned was that the #MeToo movement was started by a Black woman. Although I knew the BLM movement was started by 3 queer Black women, I was surprised to discover that #MeToo was created by a Black woman. I realized that when the movement hit mainstream media, it decided to center attractive, white women as the face of the movement instead of its original creator. Overall, I thought the 3 lessons were engaging and fun, considering the subject of the lessons. The BC facilitators were all very nice and easy to feel comfortable with.

Sam (he/him) (Sophomore @ Pioneer Charter School): My favorite part of the BC lessons was being able to talk to everyone and have a really deep conversation about topics pertaining to intersectionality, rape culture, and sexual violence within the African diaspora. This actually helped me learn a lot! Something new that I learned was the issue of child sex trafficking in DR and it was really interesting and important to learn about that because it's something that I would have never learned from school or somewhere else. I loved learning from Katherine, Daniela, Fabiana and Kate, everyone was so friendly and kind. It was also really clear how much work they put into this and how everyone was actually interested in all the conversations we had.