Oakton Community College partnered with the Evanston/North Shore YWCA on Thursday to host the third annual gender violence conference.

The workshop aims to educate people on gender violence prevention, with a particular focus this year on how that relates to men, said Alan Kravtsov, Oakton’s program and marketing assistant. Participants gathered at Oakton in Des Plaines to discuss and learn about the issue in a three-hour class.

A brochure for the workshop said it focused on educating men on gender violence — how to think about, approach and prevent it. In addition, the program aimed to teach participants how to critically analyze prevention efforts and gain insight into the relations between gender violence and other social problems.

“We hosted the workshop … because it gives the opportunity to professionals that are in the health care field to receive (continuing education) hours … and expand on their knowledge, and this helps them maintain a license in the state of Illinois,” Kravtsov said.

Participants in the workshop were largely health care professionals, but some Oakton administrators and people who work with gender violence victims and perpetrators took part as well, he said. Participants attended a lecture and later discussed what they learned in relation to their personal experiences during an “informal networking session,” he said.

The guest lecturer at the workshop was Jackson Katz, co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention — an organization that works to prevent gender violence in collegiate and professional sports, and in the U.S. military.

Katz’s presentation encouraged men of all ages to work to prevent gender violence in sports culture, the education system and their communities, he told The Daily in an email.

“Gender violence is a hugely important topic that, in one way or another, affects virtually everybody in our society and people around the world,” he said in the email. “It is linked directly and intersects with a range of other social problems.”

Katz said he hoped his lecture had provided workshop attendees with “cutting edge conceptual frameworks” and “concrete strategies” for engaging men in preventing gender violence.

The partnership between Oakton and the YWCA in organizing the workshop is a result of aligning organizational missions, Kravtsov said. He said the workshop would be held again next year, and that he hopes more people will attend as the program continues to develop.

“(Oakton’s) mission is to inform professionals of new things that are happening in the field … preventing gender violence from happening again … and (the YWCA’s) mission is to help victims,” he said.

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