Every April, the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (OCADSV) and the Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force (ORSATF) and programs throughout the state seek to bring awareness about the issue of sexual assault, as well as to educate about services available to survivors and to promote prevention efforts. For 2011, the Coalition and ORSATF highlighted primary prevention and technology safety by highlighting positive internet sites and blogs dedicated to issues and topics of consent and healthy sexuality. When we can move to normalize conversation around healthy sex and sexuality, we are working to undo the existing messaging that promotes and allows for the continuation of a rape culture.

 

 

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Feel free to download the following materials for your SAAM efforts:

 

This year, the Coalition chose to highlight primary prevention and technology safety. The current cultural shift of using social media tools on a daily basis has allowed for stalking to seem acceptable. “Keeping tabs” on others has normalized stalking behavior. This year’s NSAM we hope to encourage healthy communication and bring about awareness that stalking can have many different forms, especially with technology. 

 

Download this poster in:

 

Feel free to download the following material for your NSAM efforts:

 

 

The Coalition highlighted primary prevention and technology safety for Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) as well as the Purple Lights Night campaign. The Coalition encouraged neighborhoods, citizens, and companies to light their town purple in October for DVAM. Purple Light Nights started in Covington, WA, in 2007 and has grown nationally with 15 other states, 2 Provinces from Canada, and the whole territory of Guam participating. The color purple is recognized as the international color symbolic of domestic violence. The goal is to remember those who were murdered by intimate partners and give hope to those still living with abuse. We want to strongly promote the message that: Domestic Violence has NO PLACE in our Community.

 

Download this poster in:

 

Feel free to download the following materials for your DVAM efforts:

 

The Coalition and Oregon Attorney General Sexual Assault Task Force (ORSATF) SAAM 2010 efforts followed the lead of the National Sexual Assault Awareness Month camplaign and focused on preventing sexual assault on higher education campuses.

 

The Coalition's 2010 NSAM campaign followed the lead of National Stalking Awareness Month  campaign and used their poster.

The first community awareness efforts in response to domestic violence were observed as part of the Day of Unity during the early 1980’s. The Day of Unity sparked a flurry of domestic violence awareness events throughout October, increasing visibility to our movement year after year. In 1989, the U.S. Congress proclaimed October National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  Bringing light to the matter in the company of our communities and our government has created many opportunities for survivors of domestic violence, and it is because of your activism that we have come this far. In 2009, it had been 20 years since our first DVAM, and Oregon’s proclamation is louder than ever. DVAM events have fostered support, survivors’ stories, public commentary and vigils to remember those we now call silent witnesses. Vigils have brought communities together to honor domestic violence survivors, many programs joined in on a statewide vigil that marked the 20^th year of DVAM. The proposed date for a statewide vigil was October 13, 2009.