Conclusion

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In conclusion, Respect, Protect, Connect was designed around the concept of empowering young people with knowledge, both of issues which are important in adolescence, and with knowledge of services and agencies they could access when needed. The young women's program provided information for young women regarding choices on how to handle problematic and difficult situations. The young men's program provided information regarding choices on how to react in, and to, a variety of situations. As we were aware that everyone reacts differently to different situations, we established throughout the workshops that it was OK to feel and react differently from others, while emphasising that these reactions needed to be safe for the young people and those around them.

The Respect, Protect, Connect program has been a successful and innovative program that has continued to develop and improve since its launch in 1996. Few difficulties, with the exception of initial recruitment of schools, uncertainty over funding, and a number of challenging workshop situations, have been encountered. In the five years since its inception, the program has been expanded from one-off workshops to longer-term interventions, and to include topics on safe usage of drugs and alcohol, sexuality issues and suicide prevention (under the umbrella topic of injury prevention).

As the aim of the workshops has always been to empower young people to speak for themselves, it is fitting that the last words in this article should come from one of the workshop participants themselves; in this case a year 9 boy who wrote:

"The workshop was helpful to me today in thinking about how little I knew about people, and to think about what made them that way and to be more sensitive to that. Thanks."

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