Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Each April, CARE invites the campus community to participate in Sexual Assault Awareness/Action Month (SAAM).
SAAM is a time for supporting survivors, talking about healing and resilience, and committing to creating a campus community where sexual assault does not happen.
As part of SAAM, CARE observes Denim Day, typically the last Wednesday in April. The international Denim Day campaign began after the Italian Supreme Court overturned a sexual assault conviction, and women in the Italian Parliament came to work wearing jeans in solidarity with the survivor. Activists and community organizations developed the Denim Day campaign to continue dismantling harmful, victim-blaming narratives and to encourage folks to take action and practice solidarity with survivors. Visit Peace Over Violence to learn more about the history of Denim Day.
SAAM 2024 — Beyond Basic Needs
The theme of SAAM 2024 was Beyond Basic Needs. CARE focused on basic needs as a survivor-centered practice, a method of primary prevention, and a way to enact community care. Our goal was to expand beyond the basic needs of food and shelter to include the need for community building, creative expression, and self-care in preventing harm.
To kick off SAAM, CARE facilitated Goat Yoga: Moving in Community, inviting the campus community to engage in embodied movement, alternative modes of healing and self-care, and goat petting. Later that week, CARE hosted The Art of Resilience: Creative Workshop for Healing and facilitated poetry, journaling, and painting.
For Denim Day 2024, CARE hosted a Basic Needs Resource Fair & Gender-Affirming Clothing Swap, emphasizing the importance of access to basic needs, safety, economic independence and stability, community support, self-expression, and bodily autonomy. Campus and community partners—EOP, SlugCents, SHOP, CAPS, Student Housing Coalition, LSS, Planned Parenthood: Generation Action, STARS, Cowell Coffee Shop, Monarch Services, UCSC Womxn’s Center, and UCSC Lionel Cantu Queer Center—tabled and provided basic needs resources to participants. Thank you to our partners for all the work you do in supporting the UCSC community! Attendees met campus and community resource representatives, played with therapy dogs, screen-printed, swapped clothes, and enjoyed a meal together.
To close out SAAM, CARE facilitated an evening of art and community at Stories of Healing & Resilience: Open Mic. Artists, poets, and community members shared their Art Zine submissions and celebrated their stories, experiences, and the culmination of SAAM. Thank you to everyone who submitted to our first-ever Art Zine – we look forward to seeing folks’ creativity and talents again next year!
