You can help make Blackburn Center's mission known throughout our communities. Here's what you can do:
- Sustain the critically needed services the agency provides to the community: Make a donation to Blackburn Center.
- Make a difference in someone's life: Become a Blackburn Center volunteer.
- Educate yourself about these issues: Schedule a Blackburn Center speaker for your organization.
- Educate our children about these issues: Call us about prevention programs for your schools.
- Demand change: Speak out about these issues—whenever and wherever you can. Read on...
To help end domestic violence and sexual assault, I will:
- Call 911 if I hear screaming coming from next door.
- Voice my objections to movies, television programs and commercials that glorify violence or suggest that "real men" have to be tough.
- Teach children to treat everyone with respect.
- Be a friend to a victim. Listen, but don't tell her (or him) what to do. Respect the victim's privacy.
- Be a friend to an abuser. Let him (or her) know that what he (or she) is doing is not OK. Encourage the abuser to get help.
- Speak up when someone says an abuse victim must have "done something wrong" to have brought on the abuse.
- Speak up when I hear someone joke about violence against women.
- Report suspected child sexual abuse.
- Encourage my religious leader to take a stand in confronting domestic violence and sexual assault.
- Encourage my employer to implement policies and procedures for addressing sexual harassment in the workplace; and if I'm the employer—implement these policies immediately if they don't already exist.
- Demonstrate (and talk about) positive gender roles for children.
- Speak up when I hear someone saying that a rape victim shouldn't have been wearing those clothes or shouldn't have had so much to drink, or shouldn't have "led him on" or shouldn't have... Remind the speaker that it was the rapist, not the victim, who committed the crime, and that rape is a crime of violence, not sex.