Break-Up Summit
The Start Strong Boston Break-Up Summit centers around creating discussions and tools that can be used to engender conversations around healthy relationships and breakup promotion and media literacy. The annual summits are aimed at preventing dating violence among teenagers in Boston and increasing their understanding of what constitutes a healthy breakup and do forward-thinking on how they would like to engage in a healthy breakup.

Imagine a world where we all were able to do whatever we wanted without the fear of being judged.
Tyler
Peer Leader
Break-Up Summit Overview
Start Strong Boston hosts the Break-Up Summit annually in July, with an annual attendance of roughly 200 young people and 50 adults. Our limitations are based on fiscal and logistical capacities. In order to increase outreach and capacity, we conduct workshops throughout the academic year in-school and out-of-school time settings. We have modified our workshops down to fit a 50-minute window. In the early years of Start Strong, we facilitated a Summit via webinar across all Start Strong sites around the country.
Below are the following ways the Summit can be modified to fit different environments.
Young People
Adults
Modifications
Break-Up Summit Modifications
Workshops
Workshops can be administered in separate class periods or workshop times. Break-Ups 101 would be the sentinel workshop to kick off the series and can be followed up with a choice of workshops related to the theme. Each Summit has 5 workshops centered around a theme.
In-Person Summits
Our staff can train staff of various organizations to use the workshop materials at their site. In a series of video and phone conference calls, we can work to tailor the workshops to the teens in their community and prepare them to facilitate the workshops on the day of the event.
Video Webinars
The Summit can be conducted via video conference. Activities can be modified to give sites a chance to conduct the activity and present via video conferencing. Other technologies can be woven in, such as polling via text, or submission of video projects before and after the webinar.
"Healthy Break-Up" Materials
We work continuously and collaboratively with teens to create themes that align with the needs and trends among their peers. Themes have included Break-Ups and Social Media, "Situation Ships," as well as Break-Ups and Gender.
Want to Host a Break-Up Summit?
With each Summit, we create and use tools that help facilitate the dialogue around issues, such as UR Breaking Up?! and Reflect and Relate. The strengths of the tools are that they can be used by anyone regardless of age, race, or sexual orientation. After each Summit, our goal is to continue disseminating these tools through the Internet, social marketing avenues, community contacts, as well as other traditional sources such as print media.

A Rap from Marlon
Abuse in a teen relationship isn’t okay
If thats happening call up Start Strong today
Abuse can mean your wallet is empty,
you have a scar,
or even your feelings are hurt but
dont let that bring you down
get up and stop facing that dirt.
You might have been pressured into
something you didn't want to do
or even manipulated into thinking it’s your fault
but I can tell you something right now
its not so don't live with the guilt you got push through it.
If you need an extra hand in doing
so you gotta call up Start Strong
c'mon over and make a few friends
and stay til the parties over.