xChange Series Podcast.
Interview with Dr. Elaine Enarson.

Part 3 – Partnerships.

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Voiceover: You are listening to a podcast by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. The NSVRC serves as the nation’s principle information and resource center regarding all aspects of sexual violence and its prevention. This podcast is part of the NSVRC xChange series where research and practice converge to end sexual violence.

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Interviewer: In today’s podcast we continue our conversation with Dr. Elaine Enarson about her research regarding sexual and intimate partner violence in the context of disasters. Dr. Enarson is an American disaster sociologist based in Colorado, where she is an international consultant on gender-responsive disaster reduction and offers distance courses on disaster management to American and Canadian students.

You have mentioned, in talking about both steps for prevention and also working with survivors, a number of organizations and also really key individuals to partner with. Can you talk some more about what kinds of partnerships are needed?

Dr. Enarson: Absolutely. It’s become more clear than ever that becoming a disaster-resilient nation really is not going to be done for us by anybody else.  Really it takes all of us. That disasters begin and end at the grassroots, where we live. So with that perspective, the partnerships that our programs need to be initiating and building and strengthening are those that they already have. So every program is already deeply embedded in many different networks. You may find that some organization that you work with, one of your funders perhaps, or one of the schools that you work with, already has an emergency preparedness plan but you might not be aware of it, you might not be able to share resources or share ideas. That’s an example of a partnership so finding out what’s already happening in the networks that you’re already embedded in is important.

Certainly it’s important - it’s critical really - to partner with the local disaster managers. And that just begins with your emergency manager, if you’re lucky enough to live in a community that has a full-time emergency planning coordinator. If not, visit the website of your state emergency management agency and you’ll find contacts across the state that you could reach out to.

There’s also an organization called VOAD - Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters. They have a state presence and you may or may not already be a part of VOAD but I find, for the most part, that domestic violence and sexual assault centers are not, and absolutely should be at this table. This is a very important avenue into doing community-based work. It’s a wonderful group of people who do this work regularly so they have a lot of experience to bring, but they don’t again understand the particular challenges of organizations like yours.

There are other disaster responders that are excellent partners too, social service agencies, all the faith-based organizations in your towns, the schools, volunteers who work of course with the Red Cross and other faith-based organizations like the Mennonites who are very active, United Methodist Women, Medical Reserve Corps.

But I’d like to emphasize here the importance of reaching out and working with our women’s groups. The reason we care about gender-based violence is because we had a strong feminist movement in this country that brought violence against women - and from that point on violence of all sorts - to the forefront. And these women’s organizations are here today. They are huge and I think untapped resources for doing really excellent work to mitigate violence, sexual violence, in disasters. So I’m thinking of the grassroots women’s groups that are working with people living with HIV/AIDS, people living with disabilities of different kinds, people working with the undocumented. But also the women’s programs that work with girls, that work with seniors, that work with widows, that work with women heading households alone. Women’s groups that work with business owners, and women’s groups that  bring together women who are educators and leaders in their community. These are really important actors in almost all of our communities of any size really but I find very often that that connection between disaster work and the really excellent, you know, resilience-building community work of women’s organizations is not clear. And that’s a merger – that's a connection that I think domestic violence and sexual assault centers could really help make.

Two other points that I’d like to emphasize. And one is the important role, again unrealized role to date, I think, of men who speak out against violence against women – or against gender-based violence more broadly. And they, as you know, have been very important in the past anti-violence work in this country. There is strong role for them to play here as well – to step up and use the resources of their own community – for example a fraternity or a sports team of some kind, or a clothing manufacturer. To use the resources at their disposal to highlight the increased risk at this particular moment. It’s a fleeting moment but it’s a life-saving moment for people. It’s a moment that we  need to really shine a light on and I think that men who have spoken out on this could be and should be encouraged to take this on as an issue. Disaster resilience is a matter of safety and they can be leaders in their community there.

And finally I think another partnership that sometimes is overlooked - by disaster workers in particular , maybe less so in the sexual violence community - is to work with your universities. Work with your faculty. Find out who’s doing what kinds of research there. A lot of the questions that you will want to answer and some of the data you will want to use, for example in your reports to funders or in your fundraising campaigns, can be developed with the help of student researchers or interns or faculty members who are involved in campaigns already. So I think that’s another kind of a partnership.

There are lots of grounds, but I just want to reinforce the point that the first and most important kind of point of intersection has to be with the people whose job it is and the volunteers whose passion it is to help protect a community before and during and after these events. (Piano music fades in.) And so don’t be shy, speak up, pick up the phone, contact your local disaster managers.

Voiceover: For more information on the NSVRC please go to www.nsvrc.org or call toll free at 877-739-3895. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center was founded by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and is funded in large part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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