Broward County Public Schools Partner with One Love

The Broward County Public School district in Florida, the 7^th largest school district in the U.S., is partnering with One Love to bring education around healthy and unhealthy relationships to its students. This partnership comes as a result of Florida’s mandate that schools provide annual dating violence prevention education for all school staff and students in 6^th through 12^th grades.

Aimee C. Wood, MS, LMHC, Prevention Specialist for Broward County Public Schools said of the partnership, “This year, we are excited to be partnering with One Love to utilize their high-quality videos in the creation of our annual training modules.  The “Couplets” videos will be included in our middle school training, while the “Behind the Post” videos will be in our high school training. Our staff will be asked to utilize the One Love guides that come with the videos.”

The partnership will bring One Love content and educational materials to over 130,000 students and staff.  Broward County Public School District had previously offered One Love content as one of several options for teachers and administrators and moved to mandate One Love’s content after seeing students’ response to the materials. Because of this, One Love’s materials will be implemented across the board in the 2018-2019 school year. According to Aimee:

“We chose to use the One Love videos for a couple of key reasons. The videos are age appropriate, incredibly high quality in terms of production, and relatable. They have what we call in the education world, the rare quality of “with-it-ness”. The messages are given in a way that students can relate to, while not being preachy …This is essential, because research shows dating violence is an unfortunate reality for many of our students and starts at a much younger age than previously realized. Finally, the fact that the videos include abusive behavior from both males and females in both same sex (LGB) as well as opposite sex relationships is a huge plus!”

Ms. Wood mentioned that One Love’s content was chosen because:

• The “Couplets” videos are appropriate for middle school students and discuss the sensitive topic of dating violence using humorous cartoons to initiate important conversations in a safe, non-threatening manner.
• The “Behind the Post” video for high school students include real-life scenarios and introduce the topic of healthy and unhealthy relationships in a highly relatable way.

Katie Hood, Chief Executive Officer of One Love, said, “At One Love, we believe that every young person deserves a foundational understanding of the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships.  We are thrilled to partner with Broward County to reach so many young people and to start conversations that we know are truly changing and saving lives!”