Green Dot is teaching people how to become proactive and reactive to violence.

On Saturday, bystander training was held at the Crosspoint Community Church. The session leader, Lori Droege, who is the director of prevention and public education at the Women’s Crisis Center, told the crowd what Green Dot means by showing a map with several red dots on it.

“A red dot is when someone makes the decision to hurt someone,” she said. “A green dot is when someone makes the decision to stop a red dot from happening. Green dot just means we want fewer people impacted by violence. Hopefully by the time you leave here, you will feel better equipped to be able to do some things that have an impact on the people around you in a positive way.”

Bystander training focuses on three D’s of conflict prevention/resolution and identifying behaviors that have the potential to be high-risk., according to Droege

The three Ds are direct, delegate and distract.

“A direct approach might involve the bystander approaching the troubled table and sound something like this, ‘Hey is everything OK here?’” Droege said. “Someone who distracts by drop a receipt or something and pick it up to the person and ask if they dropped it. When you delegate, you get someone else.”

She also said there are two types of Green Dot, reactive and proactive.

A reactive bystander sees signs and responds to the situation to stop, while proactive bystanders are people who take steps to make sure the situation does not happen.

She showed a video to the group where a couple were in a park. The boyfriend was actively trying to keep the girlfriend from leaving. Several people stopped to help, while some stood and watched and a few walked by without stopping.

After the video was over, Droege asked the crowd how they felt about the response. A couple of people said they were disappointed in the lack of response by men.

Droege also asked for people to give examples of what they might consider child abuse or domestic violence. That was followed by several scenarios in which everyone was asked how they might respond. Finally, the group was put in a line where they were given a chance to act out a scenario to one another.

According to Droege, Green Dot was founded at the University of Kentucky.

“Dr. Dorothy Edwards was the leader of the violence prevention program on campus. What she noticed was that we were working very hard to prevent violence, but she still had the same amount of people walking through her door every year,” she said. “She realized we were working hard, but not effectively, because if we were, we would have seen that change. So, she decided to go back to the drawing board. What we used to do was go into high schools and talk a little about consent and talk to people as if they were potential perpetrators or victims, so we decided to talk to people as if they were allies, because it’s a lot more effective.”

The Green Dot training lasted four hours. More information on the training can be found by visiting Green Dot on Facebook.

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Christy Howell-Hoots

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