The Non-Violence Project Foundation (NVPF) is pleased to announce the strengthening of its fruitful collaboration with Swiss Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) on sexual harassment prevention. Since fall 2019, the Foundation has successfully trained over 1400 first year EHL students as part of the institution’s Sexual Harassment Prevention (SHP) Initiative spearheaded by EHL’s Women in Leadership (WIL) in collaboration with Academic Services.

In 2021, around 900 EHL new students and around 300 third-year students will be educated on sexual harassment prevention either face to face or through remote learning depending on social distancing measures. In addition, 500 EHL staff will receive mandatory training by NVPF on workplace mobbing and sexual harassment prevention.

The partnership between NVPF and EHL on sexual harassment prevention has been very fruitful since the start of the collaboration. EHL’s Women in Leadership has designed a three-tiered intervention method across the bachelor program that includes a Basic (prior to students’ first internship), an Intermediate (prior to their second internship) and an Advanced workshop (prior to joining the labor market). All these students’ workshops will become progressively mandatory as of the academic year 2021-2022.

The Education department of NVPF brought its expertise developed in its “Standing Together” program to best suit EHL students and staff needs.

In the workshops, all forms of sexual harassment are analyzed, discussed from different points of views (victim, perpetrator, bystander) and through role-play exercises. “Standing Together” has a global objective of empowering participants and giving them the tools to stand up and support each other in difficult situations involving harassment.

Between 2019 and 2020, over 1400 first year EHL students attended the workshops and 95% gave a positive feedback praising the quality of the training and the coaches. Participants highly valued the opportunity offered by EHL to attend such workshops as they viewed sexual harassment a pertinent issue that might have an impact in their personal and professional life.

NVPF Global Director of Education, Jérôme Lhost stated “we are really thrilled by the interaction and the feedback received during our workshops. A lot of participants are eager to talk, share views and do role plays in real-life scenarios showing how relevant it is to educate people on such an important topic as sexual harassment”.

NVPF CEO, Blaise Oberson added “we greatly welcome EHL’s initiative and are proud that our educational expertise can benefit this prestigious school with young adults coming from all over the world. The success of these workshops really reinforces the need to act upon an issue that can affect any kind of organization.”

EHL Prof. and WIL Founder, Dr. Sowon Kim concluded “It is EHL’s priority to ensure a safe study and work environment for our students and staff. The workshops NVPF provide as part of our SHP Initiative address a real need to educate students on sexual harassment. It has been a pleasure to team up with the Foundation that operates on the basis of excellence, benevolence and professionalism. We really look forward to pursuing this successful partnership in the coming years.”