What is Project Courage

Project Courage is a community engagement pilot project that involves saturating a community with knowledge, information, training, programs and events that will help to eradicate domestic abuse from a particular area. It will teach people how to recognize what abuse is, how to respond to the abused and the abuser, and where to refer the survivors, family, friends and abusers for help and guidance.

The project is all-encompassing, meaning that it is meant to reach and involve every aspect of a community. The project will promote community education at the individual, family, neighborhood and societal levels. The knowledge building will raise awareness, encouraging people to build effective coalitions and networks that will aid in sustaining the education so as to eventually create attitudinal and organizational changes. Finally, these changes in attitudes and behaviors can work to influence a wide spectrum of societal changes in policy and legislation aimed at eradicating abuse.

Figure 1 shows a visual example of who the different levels include and how they affect the individual. Figure 2 shows how every member of the community will be surrounded by organizations, services and individuals who are trained and ready to effectively respond to abuse situations and teach others what is acceptable and healthy behavior within families and intimate relationships.

Finally, the pilot project is evidence-based, meaning that it will have research and evaluation components at every step in order to measure and evaluate progress and change in behaviors, actions and policies. It will also ensure that when the project is deemed successful, it can be replicated in other communities using the same tested and validated methods.