Training Touchdowns for Violence-free Schools
Did you know that one in three Canadian youth experience dating violence? MentorAction, a program of Interval House of Hamilton focuses on preventing gender-based violence (GBV) through a variety of initiatives that seek to foster healthy youth environments and relationships.
MentorAction trainings are interactive and include presentations, group activities, and practical intervention skills. Training can be tailored to accommodate smaller or larger group settings and can be customized based on identified learning goals and needs.
Our MentorAction team is mobile and provides prevention initiatives to schools, sports teams, or youth groups to create inclusive environments that are free from violence.
Our Youth Programs
The Role of Sports Partners
MentorAction builds on a mentoring model by engaging professional and semi-professional athletes to serve as program ambassadors and support program initiatives through in-person appearances. Professional sport has a role in ending gender-based violence by acting as both an avenue and platform for change.
Sport is a powerful cultural influencer and can act as a conduit for shifting cultural contexts and deconstructing the harmful platforms that perpetuate gender-based violence. Athletes
hold status and can be impressive role models for social change and sports bringing communities together.
Our sports partners are trained to engage with our content and to encourage youth participation and leadership.
MentorAction “School Touchdowns”
MentorAction facilitates a range of school-based GBV prevention programs from recurring groups to annual touchdown assemblies. MentorAction “School Touchdowns”seeks to provide youth with an increased knowledge and awareness of gender-based violence GBV) and youth-dating violence (YDV) through conversations about:
- healthy and respectful relationships
- harmful behaviour and language
- consent culture
- mental health
- personal and peer safety
- bystander intervention
Touchdowns consist of varying presentations, large group activities/reflections, and take-away intervention skills youth can use to safely intervene when witnessing or experiencing harmful behaviours, language, or violence.
MentorAction presentations are facilitated by MentorAction staff and are offered in a variety of formats including:
- One-hour school assembly- large group education and awareness
- Classroom “Touchdown”- focused education and awareness for smaller groups with group discussion, activities and learning
- Youth groups/clubs- specialized material tailored to identified groups/clubs
During all presentations and classroom initiatives, program staff are available for de-briefing and will provide content warnings throughout.
Participating schools in MentorAction “School Touchdowns” are eligible for a first come, first serve visit with one of our sport partners. This visit can include a structured co-facilitated YDV prevention presentation, an in-person visit to a classroom or tabling event. Our program staff work with schools to find the best way to arrange an in-person appearance.
“Locker Room Touchdowns”
Embracing the mentorship model, Touchdowns in youth sport create in-person opportunities to connect professional/semi-professional athletes to younger athletes playing within organized community sport. “Locker Room Touchdowns” happen right in the team’s Locker Room before practice. Historically, the Locker Room has often been a space that reinforces harmful hypermasculine principles; by intentionally facilitating conversations around youth dating and gender-based violence in the team’s Locker Room, this initiative aims to dismantle unhealthy ideologies and re-create a space that is aligned with respect, healthy masculinity and positive bystander behaviours.
Sports ambassadors join MentorAction staff and guide the youth team through approximately six (6) open-ended questions. Through active conversations with the players, youth are introduced to principles of positive leadership and healthy relationships. This exchange is approximately 15-minutes and afterwards, sports ambassadors join the team’s practice.
Coaching Boys into Men
Developed by Futures Without Violence in 2001 as an action campaign, Coaching Boys into Men (CBIM) has grown into a comprehensive violence prevention curriculum that engages coaches and their athletes. CBIM equips coaches with knowledge, skills, and strategies for facilitating weekly 15-minute conversations with their teams about respect, healthy relationships, consent, and how to safely intervene when witnessing or experiencing disrespect, violence, or abuse. CBIM builds on the mentoring relationship between a coach and their team and has rendered significant positive results in male
athletes and their coaches, including marked decreases in abuse perpetration and increases in positive bystander behaviours, among other promising findings.
Feedback from parents include: “After the CBIM session, I had conversations in the car with my son outside of the game, about healthy relationships and respect that we’ve never had before.”
Participating coaches feedback included, “to say that it has been incredibly positive and life changing would be an understatement” and “I can certainly tell you with speaking to the coaches and having been a part of the training… that our players have developed a different mindset.”
In partnership with FUTURES, the CBIM training sessions and program content includes Canadianized content to ensure we continue to raise the voices of our Indigenous communities. CBIM is also available in French, including Advocate Training sessions and Coaches Kits. CBIM is delivered in partnership with VAW agencies across Ontario who work with Interval House of Hamilton to deliver this project provincially. Program staff are certified to train CBIM advocates and coaches.
This course is officially recognized by the Coaches Association of Ontario (CAO) and qualifies for NCCP professional development credit. Ontario coaches with a valid NCCP number are eligible to earn 2 professional development points upon completion.
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Coaching Leadership Equity and Respect
Coaching Leadership Equity and Respect (CLEAR) is an adaptation of the evidence-based prevention program CBIM curriculum from Futures Without Violence for youth 16+. CLEAR includes an adapted card series and additional college-specific supplemental cards covering additional age-appropriate conversations. Through 12 weekly discussions promoting positive mental health, gender equity, and building respectful and non-violent relationships.
Our team of Advocates, trained to support coaches with program implementation, can provide training to coaches and teachers who coach outside of an educational setting such as through recreational centres, private and public sports groups and associations.
This course is officially recognized by the Coaches Association of Ontario (CAO) and qualifies for NCCP professional development credit. Ontario coaches with a valid NCCP number are eligible to earn 2 professional development points upon completion.
Athletes As Leaders
Athletes As Leaders™ (AAL) is a gender-inclusive program created by Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center from the University of Washington and is designed for high school athletes on girls’ and gender diverse sports teams. Student athletes are encouraged to be leaders in changing social norms at school (and beyond) to a culture of safety and respect. Athletes are supported in weekly discussions on topics such as consent culture, fostering healthy relationships, self-esteem and building community. The program aims to empower student athletes to take an active role in addressing gender-based and sexual violence in their school and community.
Our team of Advocates, trained to support coaches with program implementation, can provide training to coaches and teachers who coach outside of an educational setting such as through recreational centres, private and public sports groups and associations. AAL is meant to be used in conjunction with programs that make intentional efforts to engage men and boys in sport around these topics, such as CBIM.
Be More Than A Bystander
Originally created by the Ending Violence Association of BC in partnership with the BC Lions, Be More Than A Bystander is a powerful training program that provides high school students with the confidence and skills to break the cycle of silence around gender-based violence. In 2016, Interval House of Hamilton purchased the rights to Be More Than A Bystander and brought the program to the City of Hamilton.
Program staff work alongside trained professional athletes from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and FORGE FC, to raise awareness about gender-based violence and to practice positive bystander interventions.
What is MentorAction?
As a program of Interval House of Hamilton (IHOH), MentorAction upholds the agency’s mission, vision and values. MentorAction works with the support and guidance/direction of Interval House of Hamilton to, where possible: educate, support and engage.
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Mentoring a new generation • Let’s keep our communities safe •
Funded by:
Our Mission
Violence-free lives for all women, children and communities.
Our Vision
Interval House of Hamilton will be an innovative leader providing compassionate care and sustainable, highly integrated services in our quest for violence free lives for women, children and communities.
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