Community Readiness Assessments can be an important part of getting ready to do deep domestic and sexual violence prevention work in your community. They can also be time-consuming and expensive. These resources can help identify ways to do this vital work in a less intensive and more strategic way.
Community readiness assessments are tools to find out what your community WANTS, NEEDS, and what they THINK are the problems and solutions.
Consider these questions:
- What is the level of awareness and concern about domestic violence/sexual assault in your community?
- What is the level of visibility of your program’s work to address domestic violence/sexual assault by community members?
- How many community members are involved in issues of addressing/preventing domestic violence/sexual assault?
- What policies are currently in place in the local community that support domestic violence/sexual assault prevention?
- Of those policies in place, how many are currently in practice?
Your goals are to:
- Get a good sense of where people are at with willingness and readiness to do something about domestic and sexual violence in your community.
- Help make the case for what you want to do.
- Get data to inform your strategic planning.
Continue to come back to the data and ask more questions as you move forward
PowerPoint Presentation
These slides are excerpted from a webinar on Community Readiness Assessments from 2016. The PowerPoint includes definitions of community readiness and capacity building and highlights the differences between them. Additionally it lays out a sample process that domestic violence/sexual assault programs can replicate as they engage in prevention work with their communities.