Our Values and Commitments
What Guides Our Work
CSAW approaches its work as a Research to Community Partnership. We believe research is most useful when it is developed in relationship with communities, informed by lived experience, and translated into action that communities can use.
This means recognizing that knowledge comes in many forms. Researchers bring particular tools and methods; youth, survivors, families, practitioners, and communities bring expertise grounded in experience, relationships, place, and practice. Prevention is stronger when these forms of knowledge inform one another.
These commitments shape how we approach research, partnership, prevention, and learning.
Our Values
These six values guide how we put that approach into practice.
Build conditions, not blame
We focus on strengthening the conditions around children, youth, families, and communities rather than locating responsibility for violence or wellbeing solely within individuals.
We ask what relationships, opportunities, resources, environments, and systems can help people thrive—and how those conditions can be strengthened so that safety, belonging, connection, agency, and wellbeing become more likely.
Honor lived expertise
We believe lived experience is expertise. Youth, survivors, families, and communities hold knowledge that is essential to understanding violence, safety, healing, and prevention.
Our responsibility is to listen, learn, and create meaningful opportunities for people closest to an experience to help shape the questions we ask, the approaches we develop, and how we understand what we learn.
Everyone has a role
Childhood safety and wellbeing are shared responsibilities. Families cannot create the conditions children need on their own, and neither can schools, nonprofits, universities, public agencies, or any other single sector.
Prevention becomes possible when people recognize the roles they can play—from everyday acts of connection and support to changing organizational practices, community conditions, policies, and systems.
Translate learning into action
We believe research and evaluation are most useful when what we learn can strengthen prevention in practice.
We bring research, community knowledge, lived experience, and lessons from implementation together to develop practical approaches, inform decisions, improve systems, and continue learning about what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Create spaces where belonging grows
Belonging, connection, and agency are important conditions for childhood safety and wellbeing—and they matter in how we work with one another.
We strive to create spaces where people feel valued, respected, connected, and able to contribute, whether we are working with young people, families, educators, community partners, researchers, or one another.
Change systems with communities
Lasting prevention requires attention to the institutions, policies, practices, and broader conditions that shape children's and families' lives.
We work alongside communities to understand those systems and strengthen them, with particular attention to equity and to the experiences of people most affected by the decisions being made.
Community, Equity & Prevention
We believe preventing childhood violence requires more than changing individual behavior. The conditions surrounding children and families—including relationships, resources, institutions, community environments, policies, and systems—shape opportunities for safety, belonging, connection, and wellbeing.
Those conditions are not experienced equally. Racism, discrimination, economic and geographic inequities, and other forms of exclusion can increase harm, limit access to support, and shape whether children, youth, and families experience safety and belonging. Meaningful prevention requires understanding and addressing these inequities rather than placing responsibility on individuals and families to overcome them on their own.
We are committed to prevention approaches that advance equity, social justice, and anti-racism and recognize the ongoing effects of colonialism, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. We also believe prevention must make room for healing, hope, and the strengths already present within communities.
Communities are essential partners in this work. They hold knowledge about their own histories, strengths, relationships, challenges, and possibilities that cannot be replaced by research alone. We work alongside communities to understand local conditions, build on existing strengths, and strengthen the relationships and systems that make prevention possible.
Our aim is to help create communities where children and youth experience safety, belonging, connection, and opportunity; families have the support and resources they need; and people see themselves as part of creating those conditions.
Youth, Survivors & Lived Expertise
We believe lived experience is expertise. Youth and survivors hold knowledge about violence, safety, healing, help-seeking, and prevention that research and professional experience alone cannot provide. Their perspectives can help us understand what hurts, what helps, what builds trust, and what adults and institutions may be missing.
Survivor leadership has been part of CSAW’s story from the beginning. Survivors helped shape the Center’s early vision and have influenced how we understand prevention and work with communities. We want to continue honoring and strengthening that foundation.
Our work with young people is also evolving. Youth perspectives increasingly inform CSAW’s research, prevention messaging, resources, professional learning, and community work. We are working to create more consistent and meaningful opportunities for young people to influence decisions, see how their contributions shape the work, and participate as partners rather than simply as sources of information.
Going forward, we are committed to strengthening both youth and survivor partnership across our work. That means continuing to learn what authentic partnership requires, creating meaningful opportunities for participation and leadership, and being accountable for how lived expertise influences the questions we ask, the decisions we make, and the approaches we develop.
Our goal is not to speak for youth and survivors, but to build ways of working in which their knowledge can meaningfully shape prevention.
Choice, Agency & Empowerment
We believe choice and agency are fundamental to safety, prevention, and healing. At the center of interpersonal violence and abuse is a misuse of power: “I will do with you and your body as I please.” Violence can take away choice, agency, and a person's sense of control over their own body and life.
For that reason, prevention cannot focus only on reducing harm. It must also strengthen the conditions that support agency, dignity, equity, and meaningful choice. This includes creating environments where children and young people are respected, where people can seek help and be heard, and where survivors have meaningful choices about what safety and healing look like for them.
This commitment shapes how we think about power in our own work as well. We aim to create opportunities for youth, survivors, families, and communities to influence decisions that affect them rather than having decisions made for them.
CSAW Right to Choose Statement
Choice and empowerment are instrumental to both violence prevention and trauma healing. We believe that choice, equity, and empowerment must be centered in violence prevention work.
We are, fundamentally, pro-choice. We support the right to choose one's own reproductive health decisions and believe that equitable access to high-quality health care is a basic human right.
This statement reflects the values and perspectives of CSAW and is not intended to represent, nor should it be interpreted as representing, the official views of the University of Oregon.
