By Michelle Aquino | Special Events Manager
Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to introduce you to One Love and the progress we’ve made over the last year toward ending relationship violence by educating, empowering, and activating young people in a movement for change.
About the One Love Foundation
The mission of the One Love Foundation in honor of Yeardley Love is to end relationship violence by educating, empowering, and activating young people in a movement for change. One Love was created to honor Yeardley Love, a University of Virginia senior who was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend just three weeks before graduation. After her death, her family and friends were shocked to learn the statistics that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will be in an abusive relationship in his or her lifetime and that young women ages 16-24 are at 3X greater risk. One Love’s work today is dedicated to changing those statistics.
We have grown from a local organization to a national presence in just a year because of our powerful film workshop Escalation that we are bringing to colleges across the nation. In just a year we brought Escalation to nearly 400 colleges and over 150 high schools. Student response has been tremendous with 97% of participants saying they would recommend the workshop to a friend and over 85% saying it should be required viewing at their school because of its importance. The workshop has an incredible ability to show all participants that unhealthy and abusive relationships aren’t something that happen to others – they are something around them every day. Here is a link to a piece Katie Couric did about One Love’s work last spring.
Additionally, in partnership with our pro bono creative partner MAL/FOR GOOD, We launched the #ThatsNotLove national campaign in October. It will be a series of sub-campaigns ranging from very serious tones to more entertaining/light hearted. The first sub-campaign is called “Because I Love You” and both of these 1 minute PSA’s give you a good sense for the movement we are trying to build and the tone we are striking with students. Delete and Double Whiskey. Our most recent sub campaign recently launched and is called the Couplets. These characters help define the difference between unhealthy and healthy behaviors in a light hearted way.
Finally, our goals are simple. First, EDUCATE - validate emotional abuse as unacceptable and illuminate the unhealthy behaviors that can build to abuse. By making the behaviors recognizable and nameable, we are empowering people can speak up when they see them, helping themselves and their friends. Second, EMPOWER - help those of us who will never be abusive (estimated at approximately 85% of men and women) to find their voices around this topic. For too long we have been too quiet about something we all have a vested interest in speaking up about. Third, ACTIVATE - mobilize communities to reinvent the social norms and community standards around how we treat each other. If we do these things right, we believe the effect will be long lasting…far beyond college and into the broader world. Leading we hope to make real change in the horrible statistics around abuse.
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