Jana’s Campaign Joins UMKC to Host Summit

Hays, KS – Jana’s Campaign, Inc. in collaboration with the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Women’s Center will be hosting a one-day workshop November 8, 2013, on the UMKC campus regarding preventing and responding to gender violence.  The Heartland Campus Safety Summit will feature national experts and encourage the sharing of best practices among participants.

Summit topics include Title IX obligations and requirements, the Campus SaVE Act, bystander intervention programming, peer education prevention, and far more.  Keynote speaker will be Steven Healy, Managing Partner of Margolis-Healy Solutions for Safe Campuses.  Healy was Director of Public Safety at Princeton University from 2003 through 2009 and Past President of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Healy contributed significantly to the national dialogue about campus safety and security in the aftermath of the tragic rampage-shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007.

The Summit is designed for key campus personnel from the states of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa.  Legal representatives, public safety officers, student leaders, residential life and student affairs personnel, and all other campus and community representatives interested in campus safety are invited to attend.

“Respectful, non-violent relationships are of benefit to the entire campus community.  No one is immune from possible violence, as the story of our organization’s namesake Jana Mackey shows, and as such, this workshop really is for everyone connected with the university environment.  Until a coordinated, preventative approach is taken, the atrocities of gender violence will impact our academic communities for ill,” said Jana’s Campaign Executive Director Eric Sader.

Campus leaders attending the Summit will be encouraged to develop a team of key campus stakeholders to create a comprehensive and integrated approach to preventing and responding to gender violence at their institutions. The Summit aims to transform area colleges and universities to prevent abusive behaviors by engaging faculty, staff, and students in promoting healthy relationships; ensure that the institution is prepared to respond promptly and effectively to incidents and reports of violence when they do occur, and; ultimately change campus norms so that campus members hold themselves and each other to respectful and non-violent standards of interpersonal behavior.

Participant sponsorships for the states of Kansas and Missouri have been provided by the Kansas Health Foundation and Partners in Prevention.  Also, staff assistance and support has been provided by the Women’s Leadership Project at Fort Hays State University.

About UMKC Women’s Center

The mission of the Women’s Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City is to advocate, educate, and provide support services for the advancement of women’s equity on campus and within the community at large.  The mission of the Violence Prevention and Response Project is to strengthen the University and community response to gender-based and sexual violence through victim support services, advocacy, training, education, and outreach to the campus and community.

About Jana’s Campaign, Inc.

In honor of the late Jana Mackey and other victims of domestic violence, a committed group of activists created Jana’s Campaign, Inc. with the single mission of reducing gender and relationship violence.  “We believe it is our responsibility to use the story of Jana’s life and the story of her death to help reduce violence against women.” Through our program activities, Jana’s Campaign aims to play a significant role in breaking the cycle of domestic and dating violence and be a catalyst for social change.

Jana’s Campaign believes that colleges and universities should be mobilized to reduce gender violence.  This includes encouraging higher education to improve their prevention efforts and response to gender violence on campus and to play a more active role in using their resources to impact the communities in which they reside.