The Company That Owns Gucci Is Funding Sexual Violence Education in New York Classrooms

In a New York classroom, a group of teenagers are working through a lesson their schools do not otherwise provide. The subject is sexual violence, and specifically how to recognise and prevent it.

The programme is Project DOT, standing for Dream, Own, Tell, run as part of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault and aimed at historically marginalised young people. It is partially funded by the Kering Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the European luxury group that owns Gucci and Saint Laurent.

What the students say is missing

The students are consistent on why the programme exists, and it is not complicated.

"We just don't really receive sex ed," says Maymuna, who is 15. "For example, in my school, we only received it in fifth grade. And we only had it for, I think, one or two days."

All six students spoken to agree that sex education is not part of their regular high school curriculum. Ashlynn, also 15, says this is the first time she has learned anything on the subject, let alone worked on a project about it, and describes it as eye-opening.

What the programme supplies is largely vocabulary. Students learn the distinction between sexual harassment and sexual assault, and acquire language for the range of ways young people encounter sexual violence, from explicit and unwanted jokes through to coercion and the non-consensual sharing of images.

I kind of expanded my definition on what sexual violence means

What changes when they have the words

The effect the students describe is one of recognition rather than warning.

"For me, I kind of expanded my definition on what sexual violence means," Maymuna says. "I actually did not know about what it really entailed for some of the things I was learning. I learned more about what it means to set up boundaries, because I myself kind of struggle with setting them up."

Isabella, 17, arrives at the point most prevention education is trying to reach. "Sometimes you'll think, oh, maybe this won't happen to me, but everybody's under the same umbrella of stuff being able to happen to them."

The Alliance, which has run for more than two decades, describes Project DOT as a youth development programme that works through education, leadership development and bystander engagement.

Why a luxury group is paying for it

The obvious question is what any of this has to do with a company that sells handbags.

Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering's chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, was in the room during the session, alongside Ewa Abrams, president of Kering Americas, and Celine Bonnaire, the foundation's executive director.

Daveu's answer is straightforward. "We have to train really young people and the young generations because they are the future."

Bonnaire and Daveu describe the rationale as twofold: strengthening global impact and building community. The more interesting half is what the company does with the same material internally.

The training runs both ways

Abrams describes a deliberate loop between what happens in the classroom and what happens inside the business.

"You can intervene and you can educate, talk to your friends, talk to your friend groups," she says. "So we actually take that same philosophy as part of the pillars of the foundation work and we train our employees. We have a dedicated policy related to domestic violence. Our employees become the ambassadors. They become, sort of, culturally responsible for doing good in the world."

The connection, she says, is that the training component visible in the room is brought back to the employee community. What she valued in this particular session was that the repeated concept was educating.

That is a more defensible structure than most corporate philanthropy manages. The company is not only writing a cheque for a programme it has nothing to do with. It is running a version of the same training on its own staff, which at least means somebody inside the business has to understand what they are funding.