Dinosaur!
Empowered Together works towards the eradication of sexual violence in the community by providing educational workshops to high school students. Inline with our mission, we want to provide subsidised sexting workshops to two low-socioeconomic schools in Victoria, which they otherwise will not be able afford.

We hope that through education, we can prevent future acts of sexual violence. For example, through our sexting workshop, we aim to educate students on how to protect themselves online and address cyber-bullying of a sexual nature. Our workshops specifically target four key individuals including; the cyberbully/sexter, secondary cyberbully, the bystander, and the target or victim. Our focus is based on harm minimisation principles and educating students on affirmative consent, sexting ethics, non-consensual use of sexual images, and the relationship between gender and sexting. Our goals with these workshops include destigmatise topics surrounding sexting, encourage students to think critically of the current state of sexting, introduce concepts such as gender imbalance and develop empathy towards different genders, and practicing these concepts through scenarios.

Empowered Together undertakes this project because sexual violence is still common in Australia. 18% of women and 4.7% of men have experienced sexual violence with new online forms of sexual violence being propagated, there is a real need for education and prevention within our communities. This is especially important considering that half of Australian 16-18 year olds have sent a sext. Empowered Together has identified that a lot of the culture that condones acts of sexual violence starts in high schools. Empowered together aims to break this culture cycle by targeting high schools and educating young people to be more active voices in preventing sexual violence in all forms.