Jana’s Campaign Hosts Third Annual Heartland Campus Safety Summit

Hays, KS– Thanks to a $15,000 grant from Verizon Wireless, Jana’s Campaign will once again host the Heartland Campus Safety Summit at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas on November 3-4, 2015. The purpose of this regional and affordable conference is to provide college personnel with practical guidance and knowledge about preventing and responding to sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking. “While American higher education institutions have improved their efforts to prevent gender-based violence on their campuses in recent years, there is still much more work to be done,” says Heather Lambert, board president of Jana’s Campaign. “By offering a regional and affordable conference on these issues, it is our hope that college and university personnel will be better equipped with the knowledge and skills to reduce sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking on their campuses”.

This year’s keynote speakers will focus on the impact of student advocacy and the important role athletics plays in preventing gender-based violence. Summit workshops will focus on prevention programming, effectively responding to incidents of violence, improving campus policy and engaging men.

In 2013, the first Heartland Campus Safety Summit was held on the campus of University of Missouri-Kansas City with 42 schools participating. Last year college and university personnel from 85 institutions attended the summit from the states of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Registrations are now open for the 2015 summit. To learn more about the conference or to register, visit heartlandsummit.org.

Jana’s Campaign is a national educational and gender violence prevention organization created in honor of the late Jana Mackey of Lawrence, Kansas. Mackey, a 25-year old law student at the University of Kansas was killed by an ex-boyfriend in 2008. HopeLine grants from Verizon Wireless connect survivors of domestic violence to vital resources and funds organizations nationwide. Visit verizonwireless.com/aboutus/hopeline/ for more information.