By Mariana Montoya
The Sexual Assault Awareness and Violence Education team held its first meeting yesterday to set up an agenda for spring semester events.
Take Back the Night was one of the events mentioned and will be held on April 25.
This is a yearly event in which students, faculty and community leaders come together to march, and hear testimonials from survivors.
Among other events mentioned were workshops that will be offered throughout of April because it is Sexual Assault Awarness month.
These workshops are dedicated to different types of assault, human trafficking awareness, health fairs and workshops promoting healthy relationships.
Marilyn Ladd, women’s health professor said East Los Angeles College campus is known and prides itself for hosting the most events during that month.
The team was created to stop violence against women on college campuses.
The program itself was originally known as Violence Intervention Team or VIT, and it was funded by the Department of Justice.
It started as a consortium with the University of Southern California and all nine Los Angeles District Community Colleges on board.
“All nine colleges would show up at USC and they would hand out buttons and Agendas just like what is happening here, and they would set up events like Take Back the Night, health fairs, and workshops that were open to the community,” Ladd said.
Ladd founded the program at ELAC in 2004 with permission from the student services dean at the time.
Seven years after USC stepped down, and none of the nine colleges wanted to take it over.
It was retaken by current professors Andrea Owens and Eileen Le.
The name was changed to SAAVE in 2014 by the nine LACCD colleges.
This time it did not count with the Department of Justice’s funding.
“One of the main purposes of the team is to promote awareness for the month of April which is sexual assault awareness month, and usually in October which is domestic abuse awareness month,” Owens said.
SAAVE is open to the public and to anyone who would like to spread awareness, or simply support survivors.
The meetings are held every other Tuesdays in the E9 building room 114 from 12:15- 1:30 pm.