Welcome to the first of our regular e-bulletins to update you on progress in developing a VAW Prevention Network for Scotland. In this edition: - Background - Consultation report published - Advisory Group established - Prevention website underway - Working with local groups - Library of prevention resources - Forthcoming event - Contact us ** Background ** In case you are hearing about the Prevention Network for the first time, perhaps because a colleague forwarded this email, Zero Tolerance has been given funding until March 2011 to develop and support a Violence Against Women (VAW) Prevention Network for Scotland. We have three staff currently working on this project, they are: Rosie Etherington/Jenny Kemp – Prevention Network Officer (job-share) and Callum Hendry – Prevention Network Assistant. If you have any queries about any aspects of this work, or just want to get in touch to introduce yourself, please feel free to contact us: Rosie.Etherington@zerotolerance.org.uk Jenny.Kemp@zerotolerance.org.uk Callum.Hendry@zerotolerance.org.uk ** Consultation event report published ** The full report of the consultation event we held on 30 October 2008 at The Melting Pot in Edinburgh is now available on our website at: http://www.zerotolerance.org.uk/news/article.php?id=79 Thanks to everyone who was able to come and provide very useful input for taking this project forward. We are now working hard to act on your recommendations. We look forward to seeing you again at a future event soon. ** Advisory Group established ** Soon after the consultation event we brought together people from a range of organisations and areas to advise on the way forward for the prevention network. Among the organisations represented are the National Children and Young People’s Network, Shakti Women’s Aid, the Women’s Support Project, Highlands VAW training consortium and Dumfries and Galloway Council. Thanks to everyone who has joined the group for agreeing to share their expertise with us. The Advisory Group met for the first time on 2 February 2009 and we discussed our aims for the project and possible campaigns that could be developed. The next meeting of the Advisory Group will be in May 2009. If you have any items you wish us to discuss or information on prevention initiatives in your area that you wish to share please contact Rosie or Jenny. ** Prevention website underway ** After a bidding process, we have selected The Graphics Company to develop a new VAW Prevention Scotland website. The website will act as a place to share news, resources and best practice on prevention work and generally be a hub of information and activity for prevention work in Scotland. There was a strong message from those at our consultation that a lot of precious time is spent ‘reinventing the wheel’ and the prevention website should help to tackle that. YOUR contributions to the database of current practice and YOUR participation in the members’ area will be crucial to the success of the site, so expect to be contacted in March with more information about how you can contribute! We hope the site will go live in spring – watch this space. In the meantime, if you have any views on what should be included, or any other thoughts or comments, please contact Callum. ** Working with local groups ** We are keen to work with those who are leading prevention work in different areas, both to inform our mapping of current initiatives and approaches and hopefully to assist where we can! We are trying to make contact with all Multi Agency Partnerships as soon as possible and will soon be attending Prevention Working Groups in the Scottish Borders, Highlands and in Glasgow. Does your area have a prevention group? Please let us know so we can forge useful links and identify areas for partnership working. If you don’t currently have a prevention sub-group or forum and would like to kick-start this, we will happily come to your area to speak about the value of prevention work, and the types of approaches you can take. Please contact Jenny or Rosie to discuss this further. ** Library of prevention resources ** Over the years, we at Zero Tolerance have acquired a vast range of prevention reports, research and resources. Unfortunately, these have been piling up around the office and our somewhat erratic filing systems means they are less useful to us and our colleagues working in VAW prevention than they should be. Callum has bravely begun the task of cataloguing these and we hope we will soon be able to share a comprehensive list of all the prevention resources we have available and will be able to offer short loans of these. If you know of a teaching pack, DVD or any other kind of prevention resource that you think we ought to hold in our resource library then please let Callum know – and if you have a spare copy we’d be very glad to receive it! ** Forthcoming event ** Opportunities and Challenges: Preventing Commercial S-xual Exploitation of women in Scotland We are very excited to announce that Zero Tolerance is holding an evening of debate on Thursday 26th March, in Edinburgh, 7-9pm at The Quaker Meeting House, Victoria Terrace. The newly appointed Chair of Zero Tolerance, Jayne Scott, will chair an evening of debate and discussion, with plenty of time to have a drink and a chat with colleagues afterwards. Guest speakers: - Julie Bindel, journalist and feminist campaigner, speaking about the forthcoming legislation on criminalising possession of extreme p-graphic material (word censored to avoid triggering email filters). - Sandrine Leveque, OBJECT – speaking about the success of their ‘Stripping the Illusion’ campaign and how we can learn lessons from this for Scottish campaigning. This is a great time to focus on the different forms of violence against women and emerging campaigns and legislation on these which present great opportunities and challenges to our sector. We hope as many of you as possible can make it. To register for the event please contact Callum Hendry, Prevention Network Assistant – Callum.Hendry@zerotolerance.org.uk , stating any special access requirements you may have. ** Contact us ** A network of Prevention Professionals needs your involvement to really flourish so please let us know if you have news, research or practice to share, or just if you think we could benefit from knowing each other! And please let us know if you have any prevention news, events, training etc you wish us to publicise in our next e-news bulletin. Please feel free to cascade this to all your networks. You have received this email because we hope it will be of interest to you. If however you do not wish to receive any further communication from Zero Tolerance please reply with ‘unsubscribe prevention news’ in the subject line. Zero Tolerance is a Scottish charity, no. SCO 023 484. Working to end men's violence against women and children.