STAR: Southside Teens About Respect
A Comprehensive Community-Based Teen Dating Violence Prevention Program
The STAR project is a collaboration between Metropolitan Family Services, the Harris YWCA, Wellspring, the Illinois Coalition for Violence Prevention, the Chicago Department of Public Health, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the participating schools, and the Centers for Disease Control. The purpose of the STAR project is to develop and evaluate a set of coordinated services designed to prevent teen dating violence in the Englewood community.
The goal of the STAR project is to reduce the incidence of teen dating violence in the Englewood community by addressing each of the following objectives: 1) Increasing participants' knowledge of the extent, causes, and solutions to teen dating violence; 2) Changing violence supportive attitudes; 3) Increasing healthy relationship skills among adolescents; 4) Promoting peer leadership and activism; 5) Increasing community awareness of intimate partner violence; and 6) Increasing utilization of community anti-violence resources. Major components of the project include classroom-based education for students in grades 7 thru 12, teacher workshops, parent workshops, peer leadership/activism training, a community-wide public awareness campaign, and community-based workshops for out-of-school youth.

The STAR project is supported by Grant # US4/CCU514166-01 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The views expressed within these webpages are not necessarily those of the CDC.