An interview with Aitch Farley, a dynamic Learning and Development specialist dedicated to transforming organisations through the power of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. With an unwavering passion for inclusion, they are an expert in driving change and fostering cultures of belonging.
Location: London, England, UK
Aitch is an experienced leader in delivering bystander intervention training at various universities, as well as consent education and support for students. They specialise in delivering training in a trauma-informed way and creating safe spaces for participants.
“Students learn far more from other students than members of staff. This peer model is instrumental to effective learning. It is less hierarchical and more community oriented.”
If we are going to build a culture of consent we need whole-of-community approaches. Aitch emphasised that this must be inclusive of students, staff and faculty. Support for victim-survivors must be at the centre of everything and must always come first in the delivery of any program or implementation of any policy. However, it is usually the implementation of policy that tends to fall short, which is why Aitch is an advocate for action plans and working groups to hold university staff accountable to implement policies. This approach acknowledges that developing a policy is just the starting point for cultural change, and that it is the operation of that policy that needs more focus and attention.
When Aitch was a student at the University of St Andrews, they ran the Got Consent? Campaign which aimed to make consent a normalised conversation on campus. This campaign is part of StAnd Together, an initiative connected to both the Students’ Association and the University’s Student Services that focuses on student wellbeing and mutual support. As part of this, Aitch delivered peer-led train-the-trainer training to their fellow students in a two-day intensive block, and then supported others to deliver this training in colleges. The focus on colleges was to get more students attending and to increase accountability. This was through focusing on where people lived and by making the training mandatory for first year students (with an opt-out option for victim-survivors). To account for people who may opt-out for various reasons - usually being people with lived experience who are protecting themselves from being triggered - Aitch established survivor-specific workshops.
After Aitch graduated from the University of St Andrews, they went on to study a Master of Gender, Peace and Security Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It was here that Aitch found that there was virtually nothing set up to address sexual violence. Aitch sprung into action and applied for a grant to do a research project on student perceptions of safety, to understand why the university must implement something to address student safety on campus. Following their research, they worked with the Student Union representatives and staff to develop a consent education program to address the issue.
“It is so empowering to be in a peer-led space of survivors.”
Next, Aitch started working with the Enough is Enough program at SOAS University of London, where they started to experience university pushback and reactiveness to student activism directly for the first time. Now, Aitch works with Not the Only One, a survivor-led trauma informed support service that provides survivor alternatives to mandatory consent education workshops. These include identity-specific workshops for groups of survivors who are women, People of Colour, and/or LGBTQIA+. They also do study support sessions for survivors to help them build up their study skills, acknowledging how trauma affects the brain.
“What we need to do is start with support to understand whether they even want to report or endure that process because we know how harmful reporting can be.”
The best way that Aitch has seen prevention of sexual violence on campus is through phrasing it as achieving a 'consent culture'. This includes having a variety of prevention, response and support options available on campus. Aitch has done this by leading bystander intervention programs on campus - acknowledging that there is no right way to intervene in a situation, and the only person who really knows how to approach a situation is the person experiencing it. Building consent into the university experience narrative by embedding survivor-led approaches is key to cultural change within a university, says Aitch.
“Every place I have worked at the institution themselves are the main barrier.”
Universities can break down this barrier by:
Acknowledging the problem of sexual violence,
Putting money where their mouth is with adequate resourcing to address the problem, and
Embedding monitoring and evaluation of all prevention initiatives so they know what is and isn't working.
Aitch has approached their work in prevention by ensuring they collect evaluation data from each session they deliver and creating a report of findings to present to the university. This way, Aitch can pitch to the university the impact their money is making and seek to continue funding for effective programs.
In solidarity,
Camille Schloeffel
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