Healthy Relationships - Media Advisory:

On Wednesday, March 25, 1998 between 9:30 and 11:00 am, The Right Honourable Kim Campbell, Consul General of Canada, will host an information session at her Official Residence located in Hancock Park, to showcase the Canadian violence-prevention curriculum, Healthy Relationships. The Los Angeles County Office of Education Juvenile Court and Community Schools (LACOE JCCS) has recently piloted this program in two juvenile halls, eight community education centers, and one shelter for abused children. Representatives of LACOE JCCS, including teachers and students, will be present to discuss the pilot and answer questions.

Co-developer and author Andrew Safer from Halifax, Nova Scotia will present an overview of the acclaimed multi-year program, he will discuss a variety of implementations in Canada and the US, and he will present preliminary findings from a three-year evaluation that is currently under way in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

LACOE JCCS will be represented by: Mr. Larry Springer, Director; Dr. Dolores Richie, Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction; Mr. John Whiting, Teacher on Special Assignment; Ms. Osra Collins, Teacher, Mid-City Community Education Center, Los Angeles; Ms. Kathy McCauley, Teacher, Phoenix Academy, Lakeview Terrace; and three JCCS students.

Healthy Relationships was developed by three members of Men For Change, a community group based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, whose mandate is to reduce male violence in society. This group formed in response to the killing of 14 female engineering students at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989 by a lone gunman. Three members of Men For Change (two teachers and Mr. Safer, a freelance journalist) developed the program in cooperation with a local school board. Copies have been sold in every Canadian province and territory and in 30 US states.

The principal learning outcomes are: emotional literacy and assertiveness; an understanding of gender stereotypes and their effects; media literacy; an understanding of the link between abuse of power and control, and domestic violence/teen dating violence; and an awareness of the elements in healthy relationships.

For information regarding location please call: Pam Johnson: (213) 346-2773

For further information or to schedule interviews please call:
Roz Wolfe, Press Relations Officer, Consul General of Canada: (213) 346-2777
Margo Minecki, Communications Dept., Los Angeles County Office of Education: (562) 922-6313
John Whiting, LACOE JCCS: (818) 362-8833