You asked Jamie earlier about the success of this program. It's the model that we have developed. This model is a true partnership between the BC Lions and a women-serving, women-centred organization. It's about working with men who are really committed to standing next to us, as women.
When I think about that program and the new players.... We train them. Jamie and I just finished a training with a new cohort of BC Lions. They're now trained to go into the schools. We feel that the young people are looking up to these sports icons. We have an anti-violence worker there with them. If any disclosures come up, we have supports in place. In the back end, we also really work closely with the school and the school counsellors to ensure that when we're in and out of there in that way, there's capacity within those schools to continue to support the young people.
When I think about engaging with young people, the other very significant part of this program is that we do not demonize boys and men. Often, when we look at the gender-based violence issue, it has kind of put women and men or girls and boys on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Because of the fact that we've needed to address this very challenging issue, we've had to really centre on survivors. This is an opportunity to prevent us from having to intervene when violence actually happens.
These are young boys who see men standing and talking about gender-based violence. They're looking up to them. They're creating vocabulary. They're creating simple tools for how to intervene without it being something super-comprehensive.
We want this to become part of their wiring so they know that when they see something, they're going to step in and feel empowered to do something. We leave them with very simple tools in this program.