For the past 12 years, the Waitt Foundation and now the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention have supported the Mentors in Violence Prevention programs in Sioux City High Schools and middle schools. MVP is a gender based anti- violence and bullying curriculum implemented in public schools and pioneered by Jackson Katz. Katz was a pioneer of the “bystander” approach, now widely touted as a key strategy in changing school culture. Sioux City now has the highest concentration of MVP programs in the country. Research done in Sioux City by Dr. Alan Heisterkamp, education consultant for WIVP and UNI, was published in Newsweek in 2009.

MVP was recently featured on KTIV news, and highlighted students and staff at Sergeant Bluff/Luton school district, who trained for implementation in grades six through 12 in January, 2012.  See the story here