About the Sexual Violence Prevention Program

The Sexual Violence Prevention Program focuses on community-level changes to create safe and supportive environments where sexual violence is unthinkable.

Sexual violence affects everyone and every community. Sexual violence involves a range of acts including attempted or completed rape, pressure for sexual acts, unwanted sexual contact and non-contact. It can also include unwanted sexual experiences, like verbal harassment. Sexual violence is defined as any sexual act committed against someone without that person’s freely given consent. Find out more about sexual violence  from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

Sexual violence affects people of all ages, genders, income levels, social status, and location. Marginalized populations and communities are more likely to experience sexual violence, including women, people of color, American Indians, people with disabilities, LGBT communities, and children.

Spectrum of Prevention

Everyone has a role to play to prevent sexual violence. Prevention happens on many levels. The Spectrum of Prevention was created by the Prevention Institute to show a range of activities for successful prevention efforts. The Sexual Violence Prevention Program works across the Spectrum of Prevention, with an emphasis on building networks, as well as supporting organizations to adopt practices and policies that create safe and supportive environments.

Our Goals:

• Meaningfully share and support sexual violence upstream prevention strategies to advance statewide sexual violence work in Minnesota.
• Share sexual violence data in a way that supports anyone working to prevent sexual violence across the state.
• Work with communities who experience sexual violence at higher rates to create and share culturally specific prevention strategies.
• Bring communities together to learn from one another through statewide networks.

Funding

Our work is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These funding streams are called Rape Prevention Education (RPE) and Prevention Block Grant (PBG).

Get Involved

• Sign up for the Sexual Violence Prevention E-News to get timely notifications on sexual violence prevention events, resources, news and activities.
• Attend quarterly Sexual Violence Prevention Network meetings.
• Create a sexual violence prevention network in your own community.
• Contact us at health.violenceprev@state.mn.us for more information.

Resources

The Sexual Violence Prevention Program does not provide crisis services to individuals. If you are in crisis call 911 or if you are in need of support please go to rapehelpmn.com for resources.

Minnesota

• Safe Harbor
• Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault
• Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition
• RapeHelpMN.com
• Men as Peacemakers
• MDH 2015 Legislative Report (PDF)
• Minnesota Students Reporting Sexual Violence - 2016 (PDF)
• CDC is preventing violence in Minnesota Communities (PDF)
  • Describes how CDC is supporting violence prevention in Minnesota. 

National

• National Sexual Violence Resource Center
• Prevention Institute
• PreventConnect
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- Sexual Violence Prevention