Are you an active bystander?
Green Dot Lexington is initiate is an initiative rather created to teach people how to become one with hopes that it will help curb violence in the city.
We spoke with Don Runyan about Green Dot and what pushed her to get involved.
I grew up with domestic violence in my family.
I was a victim of domestic violence early in my teen years in a previous relationship.
And it was actually what I know now to be a bystander who helped step in.
She was a woman who had befriended me.
She saw some of the things that were happening in my marriage.
She heard and saw how I acted and how I sound when my husband was around versus when he wasn't.
She just recognized a lot of toxic traits that were going on in my relationship and saw how unhealthy it was and the risk that I was in to potential death, either by suicide from depression or at the hands of my abuser.
And she anonymously stepped in and reached out to someone on my behalf.
And that has changed my life.
When I saw the Green Out program and that they wanted to implement that in the city, and I was like, I was a bystander to save my life.
So if I can encourage other people to be willing to step up and say something when they see or know about a family member or friend who might be in harm's way, then I feel like I'm giving back and giving somebody else an opportunity that I'm so grateful that I received.
Green Dot is a national evidence based prevention program that invites the community to reconsider their own personal role in helping to end and reduce domestic and sexual violence and child abuse in our communities.
You're a bystander because you're present.
You're aware you've heard or seen something going on with bystander awareness and prevention.
We want to take you from just seeing something going on to trying to consider what it is you could possibly do in that moment to stop a situation from escalating.
So we're talking about being an engaged or an active bystander, someone who not just sees it and can be a witness to tell someone after the fact what happened, but can actually take their own personal role and step into that situation and hopefully disarm this, de-escalate or try and convince individuals of another way that they can maybe handle a situation in that moment.
A tool called the three D's direct delegate to strike very easy ways common sense approaches to intervene in that moment, take in their own consideration, their own safety into consideration first, and then considering the safety of the other person and what's going to be most effective in that moment when we start to peel back the layers of what violence looks like and how it begins with our attitudes, with our conversations with what we accept in unhealthy relationships versus healthy relationships, then we can start to recognize that, okay, I could be a victim or I could even be a perpetrator of some form of harm that could then encourage domestic or dating or even gun violence.
A survivor knows how to survive.
That's why they're still surviving.
So the best ways to find out what their needs are, how you can support them through this, and then get them resources, get them tools, get them skills, educate and whatever it may be that they need to help them get to a place where they're safe enough to be able to get out of that situation and make a change for their family along with it.
So that Green Dot was founded on the University of Kentucky's campus in 2006 and has made its way to high schools across the city.