Social conditioning of boys and girls during formative years affects gender related roles and behaviour, which can have an impact on patterns of violence and victimisation that carry on to their later lives. Therefore, promoting healthy gender roles among youngsters is key to creating more equal relationships where consent is respected and to preventing gender based violence.

The CONSENT project (Combating ONline early access to Sexually explicit material and ENhancing Tools to foster youngsters’ healthy intimate relationships) aims to:

• Prevent gender-based violence among youngsters with a focus on sexualised violence
• Hinder the internet’s impact on premature and hyper sexualisation and sexism and preventing online violence against and among children and teens 
• Promote healthy gender roles, equality and consensual behaviours among youngsters in peer relationships to safeguard their emotional development and wellbeing

The CONSENT project will: 

• Inform parents and caregivers about the easy access to sexually explicit material by kids, and enable them to hinder early contact and to foster healthy sexual and emotional development in youth, 
• Improve the knowledge of teachers and educators on online abuse and use of pornography, and their capability to detect and tackle them with youth, to improve their affective development and protect their health, 
• Raise youngsters’ awareness on gender roles and stereotypes, consent, and the implications of pornography on intimate relationships, in order to empower them to become critical agents,
• Improve the engagement of institutions, key stakeholders and IT experts, to safeguard online security of children and healthy development of youth, through developing actions, tools and policies. 

The CONSENT programmes and tools for parents, teachers and youngsters will be delivered in 5 languages (English, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and Swedish) and disseminated all over Europe for replication. Moreover, CONSENT will develop a campaign for youth to become critical agents and an adult readiness campaign to multiply the impact on gender equality and child safeguarding all over Europe.

• CONSENT capacity building programme and manual for parents/caregivers and teachers/educators 
• CONSENT emotional education programme, manual and toolkit for youngsters 
• CONSENT tools for practitioners and multipliers: mapping of best practices, guidelines for focus groups 
• CONSENT institutional recommendations

• Fundación Blanquerna, research and education organisation within the Faculty of Psychology, Education and Sports Sciences from Ramon Llull University, Spain
• Conexus, Associació CONEXUS Atenció, Formació i Investigació Psicosocials, non-profit NGO with GBV as its main field of expertise and activity, offering intervention programmes for women, children and youth, and for male perpetrators, Spain
• CAM, Centro di Ascolto Uomini Maltrattanti Onlus, NGO and perpetrator programme focussing on the intervention in violence against women and children by promoting the work with men who act violently in emotional relationships, Italy
• Unizon, represents over 130 Swedish women’s shelters, young women’s empowerment centres and other support services that work together for a gender equal society free from violence, Sweden
• Kaspersky, global cybersecurity and digital privacy company 
• WWP EN, the European Network for the Work with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence, Germany and Europe 

An external Advisory Board will supervise and support the Team:   

Marianne Hester, Affiliated Professor at University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Chair in Gender Violence & International Policy, University of Bristol

Karin Caspani, Project Manager at Män, Sweden, expert in gender equality education and GBV prevention among youth

Rosanna Di Gioia, Italy, researcher on online safety and child sexual exploitation prevention at the Cyber & Digital Citizens' Security Unit at the Joint Research Center

Martina Fontana, EU Campaigns and Communications at ECPAT International, and expert in managing communications, crafting campaigns and networking to end violence against women and children

Lisa Andreozzi (CONSENT Youth Ambassador) Italy, plays a major role in opening up the conversation around consent with youth and bringing a young person's perspective to the project tools

Launch of Project March 2022

EN | IT | ES | PT | DE | CAT 

• Handbook for universities - sex industry
• Sexual violence in pornography
• Online grooming: A guide to knowing and preventing (Italian)
• Effective practice in consent education
• Sexuality education policy briefs
• Cyberbullying toolkit
• Young children and digital technology
• Covid-19 and its implications for protecting children online
• Disinformation: Sexual pornography and adolesence (Spanish)
• Child ‘self-generated’ sexual material online: children and young people’s perspectives

Berta Vall - FPCEE Blanquerna, Ramon Llull University - bertavc@blanquerna.url.edu

Dimitra Mintsidis – WWP European Network – d.mintsidis(at)work-with-perpetrators.eu