Timeline
Timeline

MVP Timeline of Achievements

1993 Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program founded at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society; initial funding by United States Dept. of Education.
1994 Pilot MVP trainings begin on nine east coast and southern college campuses; program adopts a “unique bystander approach” to gender violence prevention.
1994 Publication of MVP Playbook, featuring original bystander exercises and scenarios that have since become foundational in the prevention field.
1995 MVP women’s program created.
1995 Harvard Educational Review publishes MVP co-founder Jackson Katz’s article “Reconstructing Masculinity in the Locker Room,” the first academic article to outline the new “bystander” MVP approach.
1996 MVP, in partnership with the Liz Claiborne Company, produces one of the earliest Public Service Announcements on national television featuring college football players speaking out against gender violence.
1997 The U.S. Marine Corps adopts MVP as its first system-wide gender violence prevention initiative.
1998 The Newton, MA public school system pioneers MVP trainings system-wide in its middle schools.
1999 MVP partners with the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention to implement multi-year programming in Sioux City, Iowa public high schools.
1999 MVP conducts inaugural professional sports training, with New England Patriots players, coaches, and front office staff.
2000 MVP is installed as a block of instruction in the curriculum of Staff Non-Commissioned Officer academies on U.S. Marine Corps bases worldwide.
2000 MVP co-founder Jackson Katz is named to the U.S. Secretary of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military.
2006 Southeastern Conference (SEC) becomes the nation’s first athletic conference to implement and mandate MVP training throughout its membership.
2006 MVP offers domestic and sexual violence prevention program as part of the National Football League’s official Player Development menu; MVP trains six teams in the first year.
2006 MVP delivers training to team personnel from 18 teams in the Australian Football League.
2007 The award-winning documentary, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” addressing misogyny and homophobia in rap music and produced by original MVP team member Byron Hurt, is broadcast nationally on PBS.
2008 Big Ten Athletic Conference implements MVP conference-wide for student-athletes, coaches, and administrators.
2008 MVP plays a key role in the design of the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) Bystander Intervention Training and trains USAF personnel to implement the program throughout its ranks.
2009 MVP selected as a model prevention program by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
2009 MVP conducts prevention trainings with U.S. Army personnel in war zones in Iraq.
2010 MVP conducts first female professional sports training, with Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) New York Liberty players, coaches, and front office staff.
2010 World Health Organization (WHO) cites MVP as an “empirically proven model for preventing violence against women.”
2010 MVP-Australia launched at Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland.
2011 MVP develops and implements MVP-Navy with the U.S. Navy’s Center for Personal and Professional Development (CPPD).
2011 MVP-Scotland launched in partnership with the Violence Reduction Unit of the Scottish National Police.
2012 University of Northern Iowa opens the Center for Violence Prevention, based in part on principles of MVP, which plays a critical partner role.
2012 MVP-Sweden launched in partnership with Stockholm-based NGO Men for Gender Equality.
2012 MVP hosts first-ever international conference on bystander intervention, held in Boston, MA.
2013 MVP begins training with senior and junior officers, enlisted leaders, and troops in the Australian Army.
2014 MVP trains U.S. Army Special Operations Command Sexual Assault Response Coordinators at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
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