Whether we want to admit it or not, harassment can have long-lasting traumatic effects on the individuals and communities who experience it. When we watch harassment happen but do nothing to intervene, it deepens the trauma for the person being harassed. Not taking action also affirms the idea that harassment is a “normal” or “acceptable” part of our culture. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you’ve experienced harassment, let us be clear: it’s not your responsibility to have prevented or responded to it. There is no “right” or “perfect” response to an uninvited and violating action, comment, or gesture. We’ve learned, though, that having some response, whether in the moment or afterward, significantly reduces the long-term trauma of harassment for those who’ve experienced it. We provide training programs that can help you respond in empowering ways.

Whether or not you’ve personally witnessed harassment directed at another person or community, you have the opportunity to put your allyship into action every day. Harassment stems from biases that are deeply entrenched into our culture, and undoing these biases is lifelong work. We train allies to examine their own mindsets and thought processes that may contain biases they’re not even aware of. (That’s okay, by the way! We’re not bad people for being unaware of our own biases – but we all have a responsibility to undo them so that we don’t cause harm by acting based on them.) We train you to do the self-reflective work that allows you to recognize your own biases, and to recognize harassment as harassment – and these are the first steps to replacing our culture of harassment and harm with a culture of humanity.