WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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One theme I kept repeating over in my social media posts for Domestic Violence Awareness Month here in the United States was that awareness is just the beginning, and that real action takes all of us.
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My guest today, Mary Lobson with Reese, is living proof of that.
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She and her organization are out there turning awareness into action.
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Here's Mary.
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Hi, Mary.
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How are you?
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I'm good, Ingrid.
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How are you?
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I'm great.
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Thank you.
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Thank you so much for joining me.
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Thanks for having me.
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Okay, so before we get started into our conversation, could you give just a little background so people can get to know you some?
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Sure.
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So my name is Mary Lobson.
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I have uh currently I'm the founder of Reese, which we will talk about later.
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Um, but I'm someone who's worked in the gender-based violence field for like 35 years.
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It's been a long time that I've been working in this field.
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Um, and I've I've um had opportunity really to be involved in a lot of different initiatives.
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When I started this work, and I'll I'll tell you how I kind of fell into it.
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Um, my husband at the time knew a man who needed to be supervised in order to spend time with his son.
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And there were uh issues of domestic violence, and so they needed a safe place or a safe person around for his son.
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Um and I said, Oh, I could do that.
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How how hard can that be?
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You know, I I had worked in social services and in the space and um uh uh sent my resume to the to his lawyer, which went to the other lawyer, and then found that there was a real need for that type of service for families experiencing domestic violence.
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And that really led to what eventually was the um the first uh supervised access center in Canada specifically for families experiencing domestic violence.
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So I am Canadian, um, I'm from Winnipeg, but I also I say that I um uh you know commute to Buffalo.
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I am back and forth between Winnipeg and Buffalo frequently.
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And that was really my start into the gender-based violence field.
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Um I did that work for a long time, working with families, supporting families who were experiencing domestic violence, they were in conflict, they were in crisis, and really ensuring that children had safe opportunities to maintain relationships with both of their parents.
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So this issue has been one that I've I've worked in really my whole, my whole adult life.
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Um, in 2009, uh I was part of a consortium of um domestic violence organizations, and we brought in a woman named Cynthia Fraser from uh the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington.
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Um NNEDV, as it's kind of commonly known, um, has a program called the Safety Net Project.
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And um, back then, uh, technology, technology and gender-based violence, technology and domestic violence was a really new thing that people were talking about.
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And so the Safety Net Project was really the leader in looking at technology from a trauma-informed lens to think about how technology could be used to, you know, used for good, to support survivors, but then also the harm that that the harm and the ways technology can be misused uh to perpetuate harm.
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Um, and so I was super fortunate to be one of two Canadians who got invited down to what at that time was called the training of trainers.
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And SafetyNet ran a program for all the state coalitions.
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Um tech advocates, leaders at the state level across the U.S.
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would come together every year and do training and then take that back to their organizations.
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Uh so me and a woman named Rihanna in NBC, we would come back to Canada and we would get to do that training here.
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So we would work with law enforcement, anti-violence organizations, school divisions, like judges, crowns, um, really the folks who work to support victims and survivors in the area of it was predominantly domestic violence.
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I think that that language has changed a bit now, and it's certainly more inclusive of harm.
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Um, but I got to do that for a number of years.
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And then um around 2018, uh 2016, 2016, um, I saw the film The Hunting Ground, which is a film about uh sexual violence on campus.
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So colleges and universities.
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Um it uh had had you know been acclaimed at film festivals, um, was very much in the media.
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And um I reached out to two of the women that were in the film saying, Would you come to the city that we live in um and do a screening of the film to launch Sexual Assault Awareness Month?
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So that's I that was 20, that was 2016 actually, that we that we did that launch.
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And meeting Annie and Andrea was a it was just a really, you know, you kind of look back and you think of things in your life that occurred that were, you know, kind of levers or things that maybe took you in a direction.
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And um I I got exposed to the issue of campus sexual violence, you know, both from the film, and certainly I knew knew about it.
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It it's not a new phenomenon, right?
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No differently than when we were in school.
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Um this issue, sadly, is one of the um only violent crimes really not to have decreased in the last 30 years.
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And so my time with Annie and Andrea and thinking more about the issue of um addressing sexual violence on campus led eventually to the development of Reese, which stands for Respect, Educate, Empower Survivors.
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And it's an online platform for reporting um sexual violence uh on campuses, where that's where we started.
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Um, we wanted to create a trauma-informed platform, and I can I can talk a bit more about it later, but a trauma-informed space for survivors to be able to tell their story, to document that story, and then have agency and options around how they choose to share it.
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Uh so that launched in 2020, and now we are at colleges and universities, but we're also in other spaces.
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So we're working in music festivals, we work in sports, we work in workplaces, we work in the tech sector.
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So really thinking about where the spaces that harm is occurring, where survivors maybe don't have access to resources, don't have access to uh clear reporting mechanisms, how do we use technology to um enhance supports for them?
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And then also, how do we use technology to gather data that can then be used to inform prevention?
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So that's kind of that where I started and where we are today.
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And that's an incredible, that's an incredible resume.
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And, you know, even though you it wasn't exactly the same path, they're all so intertwined that I'm sure it was easier to pivot into those different roles.
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Do you have a background in uh IT as well, or is that something that you've learned as you've gone along?
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Yeah, I am a what would what they would call a non-technical founder.
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Um I don't have an IT background.
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My work has always been, you know, frontline supporting people, working directly with victims, survivors, families.
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Um, but I had a very clear vision of what the platform should look like.
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We did a lot of so working in the field for so long, you know, you you have some understanding of what people's needs are because you hear that from them.
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And then um the uh the principles of being trauma informed, and I can talk about those as well, but they really guided what we wanted the platform to look like and to think about that.
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And then I was so fortunate to to meet a man that I will shout out on this call named Chris DeRossi, who who uh was the chief architect for the Mac operating system for Apple.
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He was head of like this secret mission that if you Google it, you if you Google Star Trek Apple, you'll find that there was this, you know, kind of secret mission back in the day um uh related to technology.
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And and so he he and I met.
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He liked what we were doing and became an advisor to us.
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Uh so he's been a technical advisor to our team for a number of years, um, and really has been able to help kind of take the trauma-informed lens that we have at the work and then build technology that really honors that, that really, you know, when we make design decisions, we think about how could this be misused?
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You know, how does this ensure survivor um safety?
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You know, does it?
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Are we compromising it anyway?
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And so we've been really thoughtful.
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We have an amazing engineering team, Maria's our CTO, uh, you know, just a great team that um has really leaned into trauma-informed design.
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And I've come to know now, like many of the things that we think of as trauma-informed aren't necessarily aligned with how technology typically would be made.
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Like thinking of creating um technology from a place of consent and opting in or opting out and being really transparent about the way technology uh the way information is gathered and how that could be used or or not used.
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Um, so it's been really interesting to to learn.
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I know way more today than I did uh five years ago, that's for sure.
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It sounds so overwhelming to me because I am so not a tech savvy person.
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I so I'm really, really excited to get into Reese and all those details.
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And I love that you have thought about the integrity of the victims and the survivors.
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You know, it is it's scary to put your information out there, not especially if you're fearful of uh, you know, perpetrators coming to retaliate or whatever.
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Yeah.
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And I'm super excited also that you've brought up trauma informed because that is that is a something, a topic that's come up quite a bit in some of my episodes.
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And I don't know that I've really gotten into it as far as what does trauma-informed mean.
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So do you mind just uh detailing that a little bit?
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Trauma, you know, it it's kind of a bit of a buzzword these days or more in recent years.
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And you know, you hear about trauma-informed workplaces, or we talk about trauma-informed technology, we throw that language around.
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And I think uh uh it's a great point because I think unless you're in this space or you work in this space, you maybe can have some idea kind of what that means, but but not necessarily.
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And I even think within the space, there's not these are what it actually is.
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It's principles that inform the way people do their work.
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So for us, the way we build technology and the culture we want to create, um, as I say, workplaces, other environments.
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So thinking about um safety kind of as foundational to that, um, being trustworthy and being transparent.
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Um the, you know, um in tech, we I'll so I'll I'll say it, but I'll also give some examples of what these things are as well.
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Like so for us, transparency um means that people understand what happens with their information, you know, where it can go, where it can't go, those kinds of things.
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Um, agency, giving choice to people so that they have options, so that survivors have options about, in our case, how they want to document their story, how they want to share that story.
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Collaboration is a really important principle of being trauma-informed.
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You know, we we don't have all the answers in this work.
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Um, we don't, you know, we can think about it and we can, you know, use that experience to help guide us, but we also really value the collaboration and contributions of the folks in the different spaces that we work.
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That's really um an important being a part of being trauma-informed.
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You know, there's there's that saying sometimes that we hear, you know, kind of nothing, um, nothing about us without us.
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And I think this is this is a good example of that, where it's important that the experiences of survivors are um are heard, are um considered, are I don't want to say embedded, but certainly they, they again, they're foundational to what we're what we're doing and how we're making it and how we're thinking about it.
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As you said earlier, you know, trust, trust is important.
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And if we're putting a platform out in the world that we want people to use, we have an obligation to safeguard their uh PII, their personal identifying information in our platform that's encrypted, and we actually can't access it.
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So if you were to come to the platform and create a record, let's say you're a student or you're involved in one of the spaces where we work, um, we can't access your record.
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I wouldn't be able to verify that Ingrid has a record in the system.
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And that's really deliberate because we wanted to create that safe space for people.
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So, you know, choice, voice, empowerment, those are um kind of principles of being trauma-informed.
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So it's really thinking about what does the person who's experienced harm, what do they need, where are they at?
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Starting where they're at, not bringing, you know, kind of our belief system or our assumptions or presumptions about what that might be, but meeting folks where where they're at.
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And again, I think for us, the ability to provide options around how a survivor can use our platform, the different spaces they can be in, the different functionalities that it has, um, hopefully for them, you know, provides that trauma-informed space that they feel okay coming to and that they feel okay using.
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We've had a lot of feedback, you know, from survivors, people who've experienced harm that said, Oh, I wish I had this when I, you know, was going through my incident, or I wish I had this just to document my story when it was going on.
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Um, and that for me has been super meaningful because that's why we, that's why we made it.
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Um yeah, so that's a that was maybe a long answer to that question.
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Yeah, but it's yeah, I think you included all the the important pieces.
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It's more it's you're anticipating what the needs are, but getting feedback to adjust is necessary.
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For sure.
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And then collaboration, I think, is huge.
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Huge because recognizing where your limits are and being able to get uh the organizations or the individuals who are needed to to step in and options is you know, when when you are coming from either sexual trauma, domestic violence, trauma combination of the two or other forms of trauma, you uh are coming from a place where you've lost control.
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And then to have options to not just be narrowed down into you can either do this or do that.
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Um it's yeah, um, that's really great.
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Yeah, for sure.
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We to we talk about it um providing agency and options for people, you know, empowering them with choice.
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That would be some of the language that we use when we, you know, because we work very specifically in the area of reporting, um, often reporting looks like a single-use reporting form where you fill it out and click send.
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And we know that um, again, there's kind of buzzwords, but one of the phrases is healing is not linear.
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You know, it's not something happened to me.
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Now I'm gonna tell someone, then I'm gonna seek support, and then, you know, then I'm gonna do to do this.
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Everybody's different.
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And those experiences are different.
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And we need to recognize that what you need and what I need.
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They may be similar.
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There may be overlap in that, but we may be need very different things.
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We might have very different processes of coming to terms with what happened in our experience.
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So um they say for for us, those are those are really um foundational to the work we do and really critical to it.
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Definitely.
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And and healing not being linear, that's huge because you don't want to discourage somebody from continuing their healing journey by thinking, oh, I'm not doing this the way I was supposed to do it.
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And you can make it be making progress and fall back, or you know, something else surfaces.
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Yeah, for sure.
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And and we hear so much or in our in our culture about um, you know, well, a victim wouldn't have done done that, or oh, that doesn't seem like what a victim would do, or you know, that kind of language that we sometimes hear.
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And it's like, you know, there isn't there isn't a perfect way to be someone who's experienced harm.
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Um, you know, I appreciate some people really resonate with the language of victim and survivor, others really don't.
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And so, so even language around how people come to the platform um can be alienating.
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You know, if we talk about, well, we're only for survivors, well, if I don't identify as survivor, that's maybe not a place for me.
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Um, you know, if I identify as a victim, I'm gonna maybe feel different.
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We work, because we work in higher ed, we work a lot with international students.
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And so their concept, construct, thinking about harm and um, you know, interpersonal violence may be very different from where they're coming from.
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So there's a real complexity in reporting that I think is um maybe undervalued and probably misunderstood in a lot of cases, or not, or not even thought about.
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It's just kind of, oh, I've got a Google form.
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You know, we've made a Google form.
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You know, Google's great, but that's not the place for reporting sexual violence, um, you know, or some other products out there that um, you know, they weren't they weren't created for those, for those spaces and really recognizing the critical um opportunity that's provided to someone who's experienced harm when they decide to report.
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Um, yeah, we hold that.
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We hold that, we hold that tightly.
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Okay.
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So it sounds like a very um personalized system that you have.
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So let's let's talk about it.
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Let's find out like I'd love to find out exactly what Reese is and what you guys do.
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Okay.
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And I'll I'll say that, you know, I'm a non-technical founder.
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My my kids would laugh and be like, oh mom, like, you know, can't even put Netflix on, or you know, you can't even do things on your phone.
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Um, you know, and I think, as I said, it's the it's the way we have thought about technology.
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And so for us, that's about agency options choice.
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So when we started in higher ed, we looked around to say, okay, what's what's out there already?
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What are the ways that, you know, what are the good things that we like that exist in the world?
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And then what are the ways that we feel they should be different?
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Um, first and foremost for us really relates to privacy and data security because that is you know the essence of whatever technology is created.
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It's how does it, how does it um store people's information, how does it safeguard people's information, um, who has access to information, all of those uh principles we took time to really think about.
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And there's something called privacy by design.
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And and privacy by design thinks about privacy from the onset, not kind of let's make something and then think about how do we make it secure, but rather how do we think about, you know, if I'm a survivor, if I'm someone who's experienced harm coming to this platform, what are the things that I'm gonna need?
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If we're gonna work and partner with institutions, what are the things they're gonna need it to be on their side of things?
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Um, so Reese simply is an online platform for reporting at it at its very basic level.
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Um, Reese stands for respect, educate, empower survivors.
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And starting in higher ed, we wanted to create a place that predominantly was for students, but at pretty much all of our partner schools, it's used for students, employees, you know, faculty, staff, really everybody within the school community.
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And um the platform, differently than single-use form, allows a, I'll call them a user to, or a student, to come to the platform and create a record.
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So that's their that's their entry point to the platform.
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The school has the URL sitting probably on a sexual violence page, uh on their website, um, on their learning management system.
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But the student can come, create that record, and then they can save it.
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So they can hold that record.
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Maybe they just want to use it as a journal space and something happened, they write it down, they have it date, date, and time stamped, and they don't know what they want to do.
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And so they can take that time to, you know, maybe step away from it, maybe not think about it, maybe get triggered and something happened and wanting to come back to it.
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Um but they've got that record there.
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Then they can choose from options of how they want to report.
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So um we have anonymous reporting as a feature where they can share a series of multiple choice questions and answers with their school.
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Um they can do um what we call a connect to my campus, which goes to, in most cases, someone who's gonna give them support, like a support.
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:44.319
It might be a sexual violence office, it could be a shared team, a care team, um, someone on their school who, you know, is a support um place.
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:48.240
Uh, we can do report to Title IX as a reporting pathway.
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:50.799
We can do formal complaint as a reporting pathway.
00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:52.880
We have schools that have report to athletics.
00:23:53.119 --> 00:24:04.799
So when Willie, when we made the platform, again, we thought about how the platform adapt in the different operational environments that we work.
00:24:05.119 --> 00:24:08.880
So we started in higher ed, but as I've mentioned, we work in other spaces.
00:24:09.039 --> 00:24:16.319
So when we work in sport, in higher ed, we might say I'm a student faculty and staff or staff.
00:24:16.480 --> 00:24:22.319
In sport, it might be I'm an athlete or I'm a player, I'm a coach, I'm a trainer, I'm a parent.
00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:28.640
In festivals, it might be I'm an attendee, I'm an artist, I'm a vendor, I'm a volunteer.
00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:39.359
And so thinking about the way harm occurs across the different places that we exist in our lives.
00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:46.000
So we we use the language of you know, reporting and supporting people where people live, learn, work, and play.
00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:49.759
So really all the spaces that we exist in.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.960
So as a student, then I can maybe today do an anonymous report.
00:24:55.279 --> 00:24:58.000
I'm maybe not sure what I want to do with it.
00:24:58.160 --> 00:25:02.400
And three weeks from now, I decide I want support, I need help, I want counseling.
00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:06.480
I can then use that same record to reach out directly for support.
00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:12.079
Maybe I have that meeting and I decide a few weeks later, now I want to do a formal complaint or I want to report to Title IX.
00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:19.359
I can yet again use that same record to uh send and report directly to my school.
00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:25.839
And that saves the amount of time or reduces the amount of times that I need to retell that story.
00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:33.279
It also allows the recipient to have some understanding of the story that I'm coming with.
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:45.519
So they can meet me and be prepared to meet me where I'm at differently than me having to show up and sit face to face with someone and tell them what happened.
00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:57.039
You know, there can be so many barriers to coming forward, and that certainly can be one of them, you know, having to recount um an incident of of harm.
00:25:57.519 --> 00:26:03.359
Um and so that's you know, the that's the essence of the platform.
00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:09.359
As I say, it works, it works a version of the same in the different spaces that we work in.
00:26:09.519 --> 00:26:19.920
So in festivals, we know that music festivals there is, you know, a high um drug and alcohol consumption typically.
00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:25.440
People are there to have fun, it's happening on a weekend, there may be camping.
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:31.519
Um that's not the time typically people are gonna report an incident of harm.
00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:45.519
They're gonna go home, they're gonna think about it, they're gonna have their, you know, potentially the fog clear a little bit, and it'll be like, oh wow, that you know, that was my experience.
00:26:46.079 --> 00:26:51.359
Most festivals have an info at as a, you know, as a contact.
00:26:51.680 --> 00:27:03.920
Well, it can be really scary to, and we see infoats a lot, um, to put your information in an email to share that, to share that back.
00:27:04.079 --> 00:27:07.920
You know, email is not a secure form of transmittal.
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:11.519
You don't know who it's going to, you don't know who's on the other end.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:16.640
Um yeah, that in and of itself is a barrier, again, to coming forward.
00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:27.440
And so when we when we reached out to festivals, we um, you know, we talked about they are already doing harm reduction in a lot of cases initiatives.
00:27:27.599 --> 00:27:39.119
They are thinking about how do they reduce harm, you know, often often thinking about it from a drug and alcohol perspective, but we know that harm is happening.
00:27:39.359 --> 00:27:49.279
And so, how do we gather data and information from survivor stories that then can inform how to make the festival safer next year?
00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:55.039
So adapting what we used for higher ed and making it available to festivals.
00:27:55.200 --> 00:27:58.880
So we have festival partners across North America.
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:03.119
Um, I can share now because by the time this airs, it will be public.
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:32.000
But we're in a partnership with the Canadian Live Music Association to um uh to expand our reach related to their members and reporting and make sure that um, you know, information is available about reporting, about the opportunity reporting provides, you know, not just at festivals, but at venues, at um, you know, for promoters, um really across the live music industry.
00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:41.359
So it's exciting to see, you know, higher ed recognizing that they can do better in addressing sexual violence on campus.
00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:54.799
And, you know, as we grow our partnerships in higher ed, it's been amazing in live music and and events to see, again, this collective will to we know that this is happening.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:28:57.440
How do we create safer spaces?
00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:00.799
Um, we another space we work in is uh sport.
00:29:00.960 --> 00:29:27.039
We created something called the Respect Hockey Culture Center, which has been um really an incredible project to lead, to be a part of, but it is a North America-wide reporting platform for players, you know, athletes, billet families, um, parents, volunteers, employees of eight leagues across North America.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:35.519
So we've got the leagues of the Canadian Hockey League, we've got leagues, the American Hockey League, the USHL, the ECHL, the PWHL.
00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:49.759
Um, they have all come together to create a space where where folks in the leagues can create their record, save that record if harm happens, and then choose from different reporting options.
00:29:49.920 --> 00:29:54.880
So within that, the eight leagues have 31 reporting options amongst all of them.