WholeSomeBodies
WholeSomeBodies is a curriculum for adults who have children and youth in their lives - such as parents, teachers, coaches and mentors. It is a primary prevention/ health promotion strategy to reduce first-time incidents of sexual violence.
Adults who participate in WholeSomeBodies will increase their knowledge of healthy sexuality and increase their skills and motivation to model and teach healthy sexuality to the youth and children in their lives.
The resource offers activities and materials to support workshops that address topics such as etymology and circles of sexuality, sensuality, gender, childhood messages, body image, and media awareness. Additional material addresses how to have difficult conversations and action planning. Through increased education, conversation, and support for healthy sexuality, WholeSomeBodies hopes to foster individual and social strengths that resist and change cultural norms that allow sexual violence to occur in our communities.
Throughout WholeSomeBodies workshops, participants will use their own experiences as a starting place to think about, discuss, and learn about approaches to supporting healthy sexuality with the children and youth in our lives.
The problem of sexual violence will be pushed out with a solution by asking: What behaviors do we want to see, what skills do we want to have, and how do we cultivate those behaviors in ourselves and the people around us?
WholeSomeBodies is available for download on the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence website. You can download the guide in PDF format.
Hard copies of the curriculum can be purchased at the PCAR Store.
We welcome anyone to become a leader of WholeSomeBodies workshops. All you need is curiosity about how we form and communicate our sense of sexuality, both individually and as a culture, and a desire to support a cultural shift toward healthy sexuality.
Facilitators do not need to have experience as sexual violence advocates or prevention educators. However, the best way for facilitators to support participants as well as understand local sexual violence support services is to connect and coordinate with your local sexual violence advocacy program.
