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What Faith-Based Organizations Can Do to Nurture Healthy Relationships
- Provide sermons that promote healthy, nonviolent relationships based upon mutual respect.
- Promote and participate with other groups in community coalitions for the prevention of intimate partner violence.
- Encourage children and adolescents to talk openly with responsible adults about healthy relationships and their concerns about relationship violence.
- Provide or support parenting classes and programs that promote healthy parent-child interactions.
- Model ethical behavior in your relationships, and promote empathy among children.
- Educate youth, adults, and leaders about healthy relationships, relationship skills, and recognizing and responding to unhealthy relationships.
- Establish a mentoring program to foster supportive relationships between youth and responsible adults.
- Provide recreational services and after-school programs for children and adolescents.
- Hold meetings and symposia where concerned adults and children can come together to address relationship issues in the community.
- Provide foster homes and safe havens for abused children and adults.
- Provide local youth with opportunities for community services that promote healthy relationships.
- Develop policies and practice that protect and nurture victims of abuse.
Excerpted from the Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence. Youth and Violence: Medicine, Nursing and Public Health: Connecting the Dots to Prevent Violence. Chicago, IL : American Medical Association; 200:28.
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