Funding Proposal for Healthy Connections, Safer Communities campaign
Executive summary
A year after the Creating a Culture of Consent Action Plan was released, the Student Wellbeing team
hopes to collaborate with an advertising agency to create an overreaching campaign around healthy
relationships named
Healthy Connections, Safer Communities. Falling under the Healthy Relationship
pillar of their sexual harm framework, the campaign will look at providing information and skills
around many different types of relationships University of Auckland students experience through a
carefully designed advertising campaign released throughout Auckland and a workshop available
primarily to our students living in Halls of Residence
Overall, the coordination of the project will be divided into three significant steps:
1. Consultation and research to understand what students would want to see in such a piece of
work
2a. Marketing and communications to make sure the content is seen by students and is relatable
2b. Workshop design and facilitation to provide students with comprehensive information and
skills to promote healthier connections and safer communities.
We are currently estimating the total cost of this campaign to be around $122,098 including:
• $25,275 for consultation and research
• $90,000 for marketing and communication
• $6,823 for workshop design and facilitation
Background
In 2021, in response to known high rates of sexual violence on university campuses, the University of
Auckland released the Creating a Culture of Consent and Respect Action Plan. Built specifically, to
advance and expand the University’s work in the area of harmful sexual behaviour (HSB), the Action
Plan encompasses various ways in which the University is responding to sexual harm when it comes
to leadership and governance, prevention initiatives, support services and evaluation.
As part of this action plan, the Student Wellbeing team has designed the
Healthy Connections, Safer
Communities framework (previously known as the Healthy Relationship framework). Divided in
three main pillars, the framework classify and regroup various projects that look at reducing sexual
harm on our campuses.
At the moment, the three pillar for the
Healthy Connections, Safer Communities framework are:
1. Healthy Relationships / Connections
The Healthy relationships / connection pillar mostly looks at the concept of healthy relationships and
everything that is included within it such as setting boundaries, values, previous trauma or even
coercive behaviors.
At the moment, the Student Wellbeing team as well as University Health and Counselling (UCHCS)
are the biggest resource providers when it comes to work under this pil ar. Care to students in this
space also be provided by support services like Student Disability Services (SDS) Mental Health
Advisorsand/or Te Papa Maanaki |Campus Care
Some projects under this pil ar include the
Sex Quiz1, and the
Empowerment Self Defense classes.
2. Consent
This pillar mostly consist of any pieces of work that discuss consent, as well as things that may
impact the notion of consent like sexual health, contraception or drugs and alcohol. While it is
mostly led by the Student Wel being team and University Health and Counsel ing, some other
providers under this pillar are Campus Care, SDS Mental Health Advisors as well as various external
stakeholders like Rape Prevention Education (RPE) or the
Burnett Foundation Aotearoa (previously known as the New
Zealand AIDS Foundation),
Some projects under this pillar also include the
Sex Quiz, the
CCoC workshops faciltated by RPE,
RA trainings, the regular
Sexual Health clinic hosted in workshop101 and ran by
Auckland Sexual Health and the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa
and the
AOD counsel ing offered as part of Drug Checking with
the New Zealand Drugs Foundation.
This pil ar is currently the most developed out of the three,
with various projects falling under it like the “
Don’t Guess the
Yes” campaign which has been one of Student Wellbeing’s
larger ongoing campaigns (see Picture 1).
Picture 1: Don’t Guess the Yes poster
3. Sexual violence
The sexual violence pillar is the support available to students who have experienced sexual violence,
whether that’s mental or physical support, as wel as the support given to students experiencing
harmful sexual thoughts or behaviors. Taking a survivor-led approach, this pillar looks at providing
as much support as possible to the students who need it and is led mostly by our team, with support
from the HELP drop-in center, Te Papa Manaaki | Campus Care, the Proctors and even NZ police.
Some projects under this pillar also include the weekly HELP check-in
, the
“Need a Plan B” initiative,
some sections of the
Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) training, the monthly
Sexual
Health Clinic with the Burnett Foundation and Auckland Sexual Health.
1 The Sex Quiz is run by Wel being Ambassadors from the Student Wel being team once a year in every hal of
accommodation. Taking the form of a pub-like quiz, the sex quiz acts as tertiary-level sexuality education and
provides information about sexual health, consent, and various other topic to first-year students as well as give
them the ability to discuss those topics in smal groups in a playful context. The sex quizzes have been running
for now more than two years and have been attended by a total of 400 students in 2022.
You can find a detailed representation of the framework below (See Figure 1).
Figure 1: Healthy Connections, Safer Communities Framework
As shown throughout this section of the proposal, the first pillar, Healthy Relationship/Connections
is our currently our least completed pillar and some works needs to be done for it to be at the same
level as the others.
In the past, programs like Mate and Dates have been proven to be highly effective at educating
young students about healthy relationships and consent2. Indeed, most students who have
participated in the program have reported that the course helped them learn more about how to
treat a partner and how to get involved if their peers end up in an unhealthy relationship. Of the
groups that benefit from this type of program the most, Pasifika students were the ones that were
the most likely to engage in healthier relationships after finishing the program, and Māori students
were the most likely to report that the course changed their behaviour. Year 13 students were also
the most likely to find the course relevant, showing an interest in this type of healthy relationship
program in late teens/young adults. However, Māori students were also the ones to be the most
likely to find the facilitators hard to understand, showing the importance of Māori consultation
before releasing such a program.
2 Appleton-Dyer, S., Dale-Gandar, L., Adams, J., & Zaffar, Z. (2018).
ACC Mates & Dates : presentation of key
survey findings 2018. https://library.nzfvc.org.nz/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=6206
Tertiary-education-based peer-led programs have been found to be more successful than those
taught by specific educators3. Out of everyone attending such programs, men were the ones that
benefited the most from them, especial y those that were facilitated by male peers. Conversations
our team had with sexual violence prevention researchers Nicola Gavey and Kris Taylor, also
confirmed the positive impact of men-focused programs and brought up the need to create more
peer-led conversation-based programs to replace the usual top-down courses facilitated by experts.
Marketing campaigns have also been found to be effective at increasing students’ knowledge of
consent and relationships and reducing sexual harm on campuses4. Indeed, according to a 2016
study by Thomas, Sorenson and Joshi analysing the impact of a banner-based consent campaign on
col ege students,direct campaign exposures were linked to an increased understanding of the
concept of consent. The campaign was seen as positive and well received by most students, which
led to increased consent activism on campus.
Based on findings from the literature explained above and after many discussions with students and
University staff and a review of the academic literature, designing a campaign and workshop on
healthy connections felt like the natural next step.
The project
Like the
Don’t guess the Yes campaign, our campaign will be divided into two parts; a central
marketing campaign and a workshop discussing ideas included in the campaign. After seeing the
success and sustainability of campaigns like
Don’t Guess the Yes, it made sense for us to design a
piece of work with a similar framework.
The creative for the campaign will be created by an external agency,
. s9(2)(j)
We are hoping for a campaign such as this to reach a high number of students, along with leveraging
the expertise of an agency that is experienced in working in this space. We believe this will help
warrant the use of an agency rather than utilizing our own internal Marketing & Communications
team Indeed, an agency, while costly, will also coordinate the marketing and communication side of
the overall project, from designing content to working with various stakeholders to ensure it is
promoted in areas where the targeted population wil see it.
The workshop will reflect concepts discussed in the campaigns like healthy (or unhealthy)
relationships, consent and grey areas, flirting and hookups, navigating relationship communication
styles and many other topics. We wil make sure that the workshop is not only engaging but
provides students with skil s that could benefit the relationships they maintain on the daily rather
than just providing them with information.
Feedback will be gathered at the end of the survey to make sure it is continuously being updated
depending on the knowledge and needs of the students.
Overall, the project will last over the 2022 and 2023 financial years as it is a reasonably sized piece of
work.
The name
Healthy Connections, Safer Communities was decided after feedback gathered from
students part of our sexual harm advisory sexual. Students felt like the concept of healthy
3 Ortiz, R. R., & Shafer, A. (2018). Unblurring the lines of sexual consent with a col ege student-driven sexual
consent education campaign.
Journal of American col ege health,
66(6), 450-456.
4 Thomas, K. A., Sorenson, S. B., & Joshi, M. (2016). “Consent is Good, Joyous, Sexy”: A banner campaign to
market consent to col ege students.
Journal of American col ege health,
64(8), 639-650.
Appendix A: Focus Groups questions
1. What are some connections in your life (with friends, whanau, romantic relationships) that
are positive and why?
2. What are some connections in your life (with friends, whanau, romantic relationships) that
are negative and why?
3. What does the word ‘relationships’ mean to you? How do you think you’ve come to
understand the word this way?
4. We know knowledge about healthy connections isn’t widespread enough. If you could
spread some messages about healthy connections to everyone at UoA, what would they be
and why?
5. We know that building healthy connections isn’t always easy. Have there been situations
where you wished you had known more about building healthy connections?
6. Have there been times that being a member of your hal /the _____ community has made it
difficult for you to form healthy relationships? If so, when?
7. What do you think other people could learn about/from your culture when it comes to
relationships/forming relationships? (EQUITY GROUP QUESTION)
8. How would you describe the culture around relationships in your hal /community? Do you
think this differs from the culture at other halls/communities and if so, why?
9. Are there any ‘traditions’ at your hall/in the ____ community that impact how relationships
between students are?
10. What do you think the university doesn’t know, but should know, about relationships
between students?
11. When developing a healthy relationships workshop, what kind of language and content
would resonate with students?
12. We know university students are busy. What would make a workshop on healthy
connections worth going to?
