I took another bystander Intervention course. I know, I get a little excited. This one was through the Defend Yourself. It was two hours and was designed to be very interactive with story sharing, breakout rooms, and such.
As such, I feel like comparing it to the Hollaback ones (both the one with AAJC and others) is somewhat unfair. While the Hollaback ones have some polls and chats, this was more interactive. As such, the group dynamics are going to play in to your experience of the course a little bit more, ie it won't ever really be the same course twice.
Because Hollaback focuses on street and bar harassment in their core mission, they are approaching a lot of this as what happens if you are out and see two strangers interacting.
Defend Yourself works a lot on empowered self-defense, so there was an emphasis on using body language and stance, to think about the physicality of the situation.
Overall the basics of bystander interventions remain the same, but in all cases, the opportunity to think through strategies, share past strategies, and to even practice saying things like, "Oh no, that's not acceptable" can help.
The class was free, although donations were accepted.
