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Alliance: Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research method that brings together researchers and community members so that they can work together to identify problems faced by the community, to empower community members to research and create solutions to those problems, and to improve conditions in the community.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is one type of community-based research that is based on principles of participation in the research process and blends local knowledge and activism with scientific theory-driven methods to generate new knowledge and action to prevent sexual violence and to ensure the best care for survivors in our communities. PAR also offers promise for effectively adapting research-based interventions for use in real world settings.

Specifically, the Alliance utilizes PAR to engage communities in:

research on social norms that contribute to a rape supportive environment in NYC,
defining sexual violence and its impact on their community,
research on community specific concerns regarding sexual violence,
defining and planning prevention in NYC, and
defining and providing best care to survivors and advocating for those changes in NYC.

Sexual Violence and Immigrant Women in NYC: A Participatory Action Research Pilot Project

This pilot study aimed to provide immigrant women with:

an opportunity to describe the impact sexual violence has on their lives,
a forum to reflect on the options women in their communities have when seeking help for sexual violence,
a forum to reflect on how sexual violence could be prevented in their community; and
a supportive and interactive environment to discuss a long-silenced danger in their lives.

[[1] Read more]

Turning Research into Action: Project ENVISION

The Alliance, in conjunction with 11 of NYC’s rape crisis programs, is implementing a six-year citywide project to prevent sexual violence within three distinct communities: Manhattan's Lower East Side, the South Bronx and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The goals of Project ENVISION are to:

bring together various segments of each of the communities involved in the project so that they can work together to analyze the causes and effects of sexual violence within their own community and pool resources to design and take action,
implement such multi-level change via community mobilization,
change the social norms that promote and permit sexual violence in NYC; and
reduce the perpetration of sexual violence.

[[2] Read more]

[1]: http://www.svfreenyc.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/research_par_1.html
[2]: http://www.svfreenyc.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/programs_prevention.html

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