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Marshall University’s first Invent2Prevent team earns honorable mention

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Under the leadership of Dr. Debra Young, assistant professor for the Master of Social Work program, eight social work students participated in the applied advertising category of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Program and Partnerships’ Invent2Prevent (I2P) program.

I2P is an experiential learning program for high school and college students to design and implement creative solutions to prevent targeted violence, hate, or terrorism in their communities.

The Marshall team received an honorable mention for their prevention project T.H.R.I.V.E., an awareness campaign focused on helping middle-schoolers learn how to identify hate speech.

“The cornerstone of social work is collaboration. As a faculty member who interacts with both undergraduate and graduate students teaching family and/or community violence, the invitation to participate in Invent2Prevent was a perfect opportunity to bridge the two programs and empower the students to collaborate and work together,” Young said.

“Project T.H.R.I.V.E. enabled the social work students to research and raise awareness about the impact of extremist manosphere perspective on social media and convey the message middle-schoolers through peer-to-peer role play and modeling training to help the younger students step up and become Media Ambassadors who were able to get over 200 of their peers to pledge ‘no hate’ and ‘Together we T.H.R.I.V.E.’”

This is the first year Marshall University fielded a team of students for the program.

I2P launched in 2021 and has implemented over 100 prevention-focused projects. The program is open to high school and college students across the United States.

For more information on the Marshall University Department of Social Work, visit www.marshall.edu/social-work.