I would be excited to be involved in a forum about speaking to teens about dating violence. After the survey was released we held a series of community forums throughout Boston called “Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: Moving the conversation about teen dating violence forward.” We included a youth panel who spoke who spoke about the issue of dating and dating violence with very authentic voices. Let’s stratagize so we can share best practices and make sure that it doesn’t take another tragic incident like this to get people talking!

We are contemplating putting together a forum on speaking to our teenagers about dating violence. If you would like to be involved, please let us know.

If not, let’s find ways to work together in raising awareness!

As the author of the Boston Public Health Commission survey you mentioned, I truly appreciate you speaking out against the the very serious issue of dating violence. You’re right in that we do have a responsibility to help young men and women understand that violence in a relationship is never ok. They need to understand that physical, emotional sexual and all forms of violence are not part of healthy relationship. We also need to stress what exactly a healthy relationship looks like, feels like and sounds like. The Rihanna and Chris Brown incident has given us an opening to talk to the young people in our lives…we need to make sure that we don’t waste the opportunity.

The New Agenda just started to formally accept members this month. We have, for the past year, been activitist in the blogosphere (see our media section) on speaking out for issues that impact women and girls. You will see in the coming year a move towards getting our membership much more involved in making change. Please join us!

We have been preaching online safety and the dangers of sexting for a few years now. We started http://www.mynetshepherd.com to help parents learn and understand what they can do to help protect their kids.

We have heard first-hand and,of course, seen in the news what can happen.

Protect your kids NOW!

Recently I’ve been trying to gather info on world wide domestic violence and violence against women statistics. I am by no means an academic in the field of women’s studies so it was challenging for me to come up with any meaningful numbers. Statistics seem to be a difficult thing to judge because it is all based on what is reported. But the thesis in my head is that how we treat women and portray them as a culture matters. And that domestic violence rates and violence against women rates would vary in countries/ communities depending upon attitudes/ cultural perceptions/ media portrayals of women (as well as policy).

So, I also started looking into Sweden which is known for having great policies that benefit women. And yet still they are just beginning to acknowledge their domestic violence problem. So really, it seems policy is not EVERYTHING when it comes to the safety of women and girls. We have to start changing the way we think.