From Bystander Intervention to Community Mobilization

Bystander intervention training plays a key role as part of a comprehensive strategy to permanently reduce rates of violence and mobilize and empower all members of a given community. Through bystander intervention training, the Green Dot program engages witnesses to interrupt situations that are imminently or potentially high-risk for violence, increases self-efficacy and provides skill building and specific strategies to increase the likelihood that trained individuals will actually intervene. By expanding the role of bystanders beyond reactive, the Green Dot program trains participants to engage in proactive behaviors that model and endorse norms that are incompatible with violence. The ultimate goal is not simply to react to potential violence as it is occurring, but rather to simultaneously shift community norms that support the violence that is occurring.

Research Informed and Culturally Responsive

The core elements of Green Dot programs are informed by rigorous research and evaluation. At the outset of implementation of the college-level strategy in 2010, a study of the Green Dot College Prevention Strategy was conducted in 2010-2013 on three campuses, one which implemented the Green Dot Prevention Strategy and two which had no bystander intervention program. In the multi-year evaluation of the impact, violence rates were lower on the campus implementing Green Dot than the campuses with no bystander program. Specifically, the study looked at the incidents of unwanted sexual victimization, sexual harassment, stalking, and psychological dating violence including victimization and perpetration. Interpersonal violence victimization rates were 17% lower among students attending the campus implementing Green Dot. A similar pattern held for interpersonal violence perpetration. Ongoing data collection & evaluation over the past decade have demonstrated similar impacts in both short-term and long-term behavioral & social change.

To ensure widespread impact, Green Dot is intended as a program that should be modified and adapted for maximum resonance with any audience. We have worked to tailor our Green Dot presentations to include reference to the Texas A&M campus; Aggie core values, traditions & language; and data on health, wellness, and experiences of violence & abuse that have been anonymously collected from Texas A&M students, faculty, and staff over the past 4-5 years. While our open presentations are more generalized in their examples for both student audiences and faculty & staff audiences, we have conducted focus groups to create tailored presentation content for the following:

• Athletics
• Global Education
  • International Students
  • Education/Study Abroad
• Graduate & Professional Students
• Peer Mentors/Student Assistants
• Student Organizations
  • Specific: Fish Camp
  • Specific: Greek Life

We are continually connecting with professionals on our campus who have diverse expertise, and students on our campus who are willing to share their observations, to create customized content that is applicable to identities, social experiences, cultural norms, and program structures.

Theoretical Basis and Actionable Components

The Green Dot bystander intervention strategy is conceptually grounded in social change theory and influence across the socioecological model. Generally, social change refers to long-term shifts in human interactions and relationships that collectively transform social & cultural institutions. Green Dot looks at influencing how social change occurs around the ways we understand, talk about, and take action to prevent power-based personal violence, and how that change is influenced across the sociological model: (1) individual, (2) relationship, (3) community, and (4) societal.

Green Dot relies on the following three actionable components to put theory into practice:

1. A single choice in one moment in time to use your voice, actions or choices to make one small corner of the world safer. Green Dot is built on the premise that in order to measurably reduce the perpetration of power-based personal violence, social and cultural shifts are necessary. In order to create these shifts, a critical mass of people will need to engage in a new behavior or set of behaviors that will make violence less sustainable within any given community. The “new behavior” is a Green Dot: a shared vision that creates momentum through the power of a common language and purpose.
2. In isolation, even the most determined single Green Dot can dissolve into silent resignation when faced with a task as daunting as changing our culture. The power of Green Dot is the momentum that can be created and sustained when individuals see themselves in connection with others as a part of something ultimately bigger than the sum of its parts.
3. A social movement that harnesses the power of peer influence and individual bystander choices to create lasting social & cultural change, resulting in the ultimate reduction of power-based personal violence. Power-based personal violence happens to such a staggering degree that the only workable solution must involve a broad-based, determined, and sustainable social movement. Each significant stride in human rights has been fueled by and built upon a social movement. Enough individuals simply raising their voices saying, “This is no longer acceptable. Today is the day we reclaim our fundamental right to something better.” One Green Dot at a time, this is our moment in history to reclaim our right to live free of violence and fear of violence & abuse.