Leaders in Interpersonal Violence Education aims to spread awareness of interpersonal violence by hosting a variety of different events for Domestic Violence Awareness Month this October.

Leaders in Interpersonal Violence Education (LIVE) and the Men’s Project co-hosted a whiteboard campaign table outside of the Danforth University Center, Oct. 9. LIVE Sport, a subsection of LIVE devoted to athletic groups, kicked off Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) with two soccer games at Francis Olympic Field Oct. 1.

During the campaign event, students had the opportunity to take pictures, write down healthy and unhealthy aspects of masculinity and discuss how these ideas relate to domestic violence.

“I think there are a lot of parallels between masculinity and interpersonal violence, and unfortunately men are more often than not the perpetrators of violence, so I think it is important for us as men to be more aware of the role we play in that,” president of the Men’s Project Sean Dunnsue said.

Although LIVE and the Men’s Project have different missions, LIVE facilitator Anna Konradi is excited about the potential for collaboration between the two groups.

“We have never done a collaboration for DVAM to my knowledge before and we have obviously never collaborated with Mens’ Project just because they are new,” Konradi said. “But this collaboration I am particularly excited about because it combines two things that we are really focused on, which is violence prevention and then gender roles.”

LIVE plans to offer a variety of different programs throughout the month of October, including a showing of “The Color Purple” followed by a discussion about how to support survivors of domestic violence, today Oct. 10. Additionally, LIVE will offer various educational programs for Greek organizations, sports teams and student groups.

“Different student groups and sports teams and…any student group you can think of can ask for us to facilitate a discussion for them or give a presentation on various topics related to interpersonal violence,” Konradi said. “We can customize those based on what the student group wants, or we can offer specific facilitations. So, for this month, if a student group wanted to have a facilitation that was more catered to having a discussion about domestic violence, that is something that we could do.”

Greek organizations are currently required to have a discussion with LIVE at least once a semester, but Konradi hopes to expand LIVE’s involvement with Greek, athletic and student organizations.

“Every single chapter is required to have a facilitation at least once a semester and then probably another program every single semester, but that is…not mandatory,” Konradi said. “But it is for sure mandatory that every chapter has one program or facilitation every semester talking about bystander intervention, about supporting survivors, about just factual education about sexual violence.”

LIVE plans to host a panel discussing DVAM later in the month, although an exact date and speakers are not yet determined.

Even after DVAM ends, LIVE leaders hope to continue expanding their presence on campus.

“We are definitely doing more programming this year,” Konradi said. “I think that the people on exec that are working with DVAM are doing an amazing job of getting the word out there and making it more accessible to the larger student body and just people who are already coming to our GBMs.”