Since 2007, more than 250,000 American students have studied abroad annually for a semester or more. A study conducted in December 2012 finds that female undergraduates experience a significantly increased risk of rape and other forms of sexual assault while studying abroad in non-English speaking countries. This project will enable us to hire an intern to provide prevention and crisis response to American youth studying abroad in the hopes of preventing increasing incidents of sexual assault.
This project will enable us to provide a 5 month internship beginning January 2015 through May 2015 for a student as a Study Abroad Sexual Assault Prevention Advocate, 20 hours a week, $12 an hour. The intern will provide sexual assault prevention training to study abroad programs nationally via webinar and in person. The intern will also provide direct crisis services intervention over the international toll free hotline, 866uswomen, accessible from 175 countries.
This intern in this project will conduct sexual assault prevention webinars to thousands of study abroad students before they travel overseas to study with the goal of increasing personal safety and reducing the number of sexual assault incidents overseas. The intern will also provide crisis response to victims, providing emotional support and coordinating resources overseas. This will also enable the intern to gain solid experience as a sexual assault prevention and crisis response advocate.
According to RAINN, 208 thousand rapes occur in the USA annually. If we apply the same population proportion to the 65 million Americans that travel overseas every year, there would be 39,000 Americans raped in foreign countries annually. From the sexual assault victims that have contacted us in various foreign countries, they are extremely grateful for our help and assistance when no one else would or could provide the services we provide to them.
