Step Up to Prevent Harm!

Join me in supporting real change. Let’s invest in an urgent, and often overlooked cause—so every child can grow up with healthier skills and a future with less harm.

Just a small donation will go a long way to helping me meet my goal for the Erin Levitas Foundation.

With your help we can ensure parents and communities can support less children to grow up causing or becoming survivors of sexual violence.

Every dollar raised helps bring Parent Talk, Teacher Talk, and Erin Talk to more schools, families, and workplaces; spreading prevention education and empowering conversations that stop harm before it starts.

What is the Erin Levitas Foundation?

The Erin Levitas Foundation envisions a future with education for youth and young adults to prevent sexual assault and help survivors heal. Erin Levitas was a young woman who was kept up from night terrors for years after she had been raped. She wanted to live her life to ensure sexual assault didn't keep happening to others. Due to illness, Erin is no longer her to do this work, but her legacy lives on through this foundation.

ELF invests in and creates research-based programs to prevent sexual assault. To change the unhealthy attitudes and behaviors of youth that give rise to sexual violence in their futures. Nearly 50% of middle school students report experiencing sexual harassment, and this number is believed to be under reported. Sexual Harassment is a precursor to sexual assault and rape, which escalates in high school and college. If we can focus on sexual harassment early, we can reduce sexual assault and rape. Join us in our work to educate youth and involve our community in this important education to change the future.

Here are the facts:

Sexual Violence is Happening and it Starts Early:

• Over half of women and almost one in three men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes. (CDC)
• More than four in five female rape survivors reported that they were first raped before age 25 and almost half were first raped as a minor (i.e., before age 18). (CDC)

Sexual Violence is Happening in our Communities:
People who sexually assault usually harm someone they know — a friend, classmate, neighbor, coworker, or relative. In fact, among adults who experienced attempted or completed rape, 73% knew the attacker. This reality shows how complicated sexual violence is: it often happens within trusted relationships, making it harder to recognize and speak up about. That’s why prevention is not only possible but necessary. Through education that takes a comprehensive approach — including learning about boundaries with the people we love and trust — we can give individuals and communities the tools they need to recognize risks, intervene early, and foster safe, respectful connections.

Prevention is Possible:
A holistic plan for sexual violence prevention is the best public health approach because it addresses risk and protective factors across ages and settings, reinforces consistent skills and messages, and shifts the focus from reacting to harm toward building safer, healthier communities. This work has been created in partnership with the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and School of Social Work.

Your support sustains our 3 main programs and resources that support a comprehensive approach to a public health problem that has been plaguing our communities for generations: ERIN Talk, our in-school prevention program for middle school students, and Teacher Talk, an online training for educators to recognize and respond to early signs of harm. It invests in parent programming like Parent Talk to start prevention early, at home. It helps fill gaps in prevention resources, like Every Body Has Questions Portal and societal level impact of getting prevention on people’s radar - dispelling the taboo. It also fuels policy advocacy, groundbreaking research, and mentorship for future legal and social work leaders.

This work is making a difference:

“My students were saying sexually abusive or aggressive things to each other — and didn’t even see them as wrong. This program engages them in meaningful conversations they look forward to.”
— Rhonda Riccetta, Principal, Baltimore City School (ERIN Talk Program Recipients for past 5 years)

When asked 'What was one thing you learned that you didn't know prior to taking the Parent Talk Session':

• "It is okay to talk to your children about things that may seem uncomfortable to you"
• "Being mindful of mobility devises included in boundaries and teaching kids facial expressions matter"
• "That you can teach your child early about body parts - at an early age"

Over 70% of Parent Talk participants were not taught boundary and body safety skills when they were children.

Right now, funding across the field is down. Survivor support is down. And prevention — which is essential to stopping harm before it happens — is often the first to be cut. Your gift today, makes a lasting impact on children today, for everyday of their lives that follows and future generations.