NYSCADV Acknowledges
Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month 
with “What is Love? Campaign” 
February 2021 is the 11th anniversary of Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month (TDVAM). TDVAM is dedicated to increasing education and awareness about teen dating violence. It is also a time to promote safe and healthy relationships by talking about healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviors, recognizing the warning signs, connecting adolescents to support, and identifying innovative strategies for preventing dating abuse from happening in the first place. This year NYSCADV’s theme is “What is Love?”

TDVAM looks different this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting everyone’s ability to hold our traditional in-person events. The pandemic, however, is not stopping domestic violence programs and advocates from taking the opportunity that TDVAM provides to promote awareness about teen dating violence. Domestic violence programs and advocates have adapted their in-person events into online virtual events so they can continue to advance efforts identifying and addressing teen dating violence.

Teen dating violence (TDV), much like adult intimate partner violence, is a pattern of coercive behaviors/tactics used by someone against their intimate partner to gain or maintain power and control. Types of abuse can include physical, sexual, psychological, technological, and yes even for teens, economic. Teen dating violence can have harmful and long-lasting consequences that affect not only the adolescent survivors, but also their friends, families, and communities.

Teens are perpetrating coercive and abusive behaviors at higher rates than ever before. According to the CDC, in 2017, 1 in 11 female high school students and 1 in 15 male high school students reported experiencing physical dating violence; making this a national epidemic.

Everyone has a role to play in addressing this abuse. Increasing education and awareness among adults, parents, teachers, coaches, school personnel and other caregivers and influencers is necessary to be able to identify TDV and to respond appropriately. Primary prevention goes further. Primary prevention includes strategies to stop violence and unhealthy behaviors from occurring in the first place. Prevention strategies that educate our youth about healthy relationships behaviors can have a positive influence in all of their relationships, increasing not only their safety but their overall wellness, physically and emotionally, throughout their lives. By doing so, we can create a future that is free from violence.
What is Love? Art Contest
February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month (TDVAM), a month designated to bring attention to an issue that effects 1 in 3 teens in the United States. TDVAM is a national effort focused on advocacy and education to stop dating violence before it starts.

This February, we invite you to join the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NYSCADV) to raise awareness. Teens and young people across New York are invited to participate in NYSCADV’s What is Love? Contest!

How You Can Get Involved
Here are some tried and true strategies for raising awareness and preventing Teen Dating Violence (TDV) during this month throughout the year:

  • Post Teen Dating Violence information and statistics: Use your website and other social media such as Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok, and Twitter to post about TDV and promote healthy relationships behaviors throughout the month of February. Click here to download and share NYSCADV’s TDVAM graphics.

  • Have a poster or slogan contest! Invite teens to create art describing healthy relationships. Recruit students to submit poetry, plays, songs, videos, or artwork online. Give the winner a prize that benefits their school, like software, an iPad or other equipment. Honor winners on social media platforms. Check out NYSCADV’s What is Love? Art Contest and encourage young people to participate.

  • Encourage youth activism virtually! Support students and young people to create a school-wide or community campaign on their own. Many resources are available that provide guidance on how to do this. If you are interested, get in touch, and ask us how!

  • Engage school personnel: Coaches, counselors, teachers, school nurses and administrators need to have their awareness raised, too. Share policies and promising practices with an informational letter. Ask for a virtual meeting to discuss the importance of being proactive.

  • Engage parents, caregivers, and other adult influencers: Work with schools to email brochures and flyers. Post information on the school district website with links to helpful resources. Have an online “watch party.” Invite parents to a "How to Talk to your Teen about Dating" Zoom meeting, holding them at various dates and times throughout the month to ensure that parents can attend. Provide conversation starters. Consider inviting parents and their teens to attend gatherings together from their home, and give teens talking points for conversations with their parents. 

  • Give a voice to survivors by hosting virtual events, panels, lectures, film and documentary screenings or group discussion gatherings for young people.
Learn More About
Teen Dating Violence and Prevention
  • NYSCADV Prevention Toolkit: This resource provides a wide variety of resources, curricula, campaigns, research and other information that supports preventing and addressing to TDV and IPV across an individual’s lifespan in a myriad of settings.

  • PreventIPV: This searchable collection of resources generated in the field includes training tools, campaigns, promising programs, evidence, policies, and other materials that can be adapted in your community to advance the prevention of TDV and IPV.

  • CDC’s Dating Matter website: These are strategies to promote healthy teen relationship behaviors with an eye toward stopping teen dating violence before it starts. It focuses on 11-14 year olds and includes multiple prevention components for individuals, peers, families, schools, and neighborhoods.


  • Expect Respect: A school-based program designed to increase safety, social support and relationship skills among vulnerable youth; engage youth leaders in creating safer and more welcoming schools, and increase capacity for school-wide responsiveness and prevention.

  • Futures Without Violence: Futures Without Violence is a nonprofit organization that develops and advances groundbreaking prevention strategies to prevent teen dating violence and promote healthy relationships.

  • PreventConnect: A national project that advances primary prevention by building a community of practice among people who are engaged in such efforts. The project also builds the capacity of local, state, territorial, national, and tribal agencies and organizations to develop, implement and evaluate effective prevention initiatives.

  • Break the Cycle: Break the Cycle inspires and supports young people 12-24 to build healthy relationships and create a culture without abuse.
NYSCADV | www.nyscadv.org