Darkness to Light (D2L) is a leading non-profit organization working to protect children from sexual abuse. Based in South Carolina, D2L was founded 25 years ago by a small group of concerned citizens and child advocates in response to a local sexual abuse crisis.
For years, D2L’s approach has centered around its award-winning training, Stewards of Children (SOC). This training, offered both online and in person, targets adults in various, front-line positions of authority, such as caregivers at home, community leaders, and school administrators. Through these trainings, D2L builds awareness and empowers and educates adult advocates on how to prevent child sexual abuse or respond to suspected or confirmed cases. To date, D2L has trained over two million adults all over the world.
In 2018, Darkness to Light decided to expand their prevention approach by developing strategic behavior change methods in conjunction with their existing training programs. Recognizing that meaningful behavior change requires more than basic education and awareness training, D2L engaged Changeable to build a more robust and holistic behavior change model for child sexual abuse prevention.
Working with our research partner, Databoom, we embarked on a multi-step process to build an evidence informed prevention model. By identifying relevant behavioral factors such as established norms, community systems, and support structures, our team was able to develop a model informed by key audience insights and organized through a framework based on a social ecological approach.