The Sexual Assault Resistance Education Centre (SARE Centre) is a non-profit organization founded by Dr. Charlene Senn for the purposes of adapting, promoting, and disseminating her evidence-based intervention, the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act Sexual Assault Resistance Education (EAAA) program, to reduce the sexual violence women experience. Through this process, the organization will provide support to others who aim to reduce sexual assault in their educational institutions and communities. Ultimately, their goal is to contribute to the social movement to eliminate sexual violence by men against women, particularly on university and college campuses, but also in larger communities.
The EAAA sexual assault resistance education program is a 12 hour small-group, empirically based intervention designed specifically for 1st year university women. The EAAA program is based on theory, research evidence, and best practices for helping women resist acquaintance sexual assault. With funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Women’s Health Council, the program was developed, revised, and pilot tested by Dr. Charlene Senn at the University of Windsor over a ten-year period.
As many as one in four young women will experience attempted or completed rape before graduating from university. Some survivors of sexual assault drop out or change schools, many suffer loss of confidence, depression and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other negative impacts.
The EAAA program is the only program available that has been evaluated in a clinical trial and shown to significantly reduce the incidence of rape and other forms of sexual assault for at least one year. It is one critical piece of a comprehensive strategy to address the high incidence of rape and other forms of sexual violence on our campuses.
EAAA Train the Trainer workshops are open to women who are employed by or affiliated with a postsecondary institution or a non-profit agency (e.g., sexual assault centre) that is partnering with a university/college to provide the EAAA program on campuses free of charge.
The SARE Centre is a non-profit organization. Their goal is to make the EAAA program accessible to young women. Trainers and/or affiliated community agencies can apply for grants or be reimbursed for their training time and for the time required to supervise facilitators at post-secondary institutions, but the EAAA program must be offered to female students for free.
For more information, please visit their official website at: http://sarecentre.org/
