Empower to Act (EMPACT) Project

Empower to Act (EMPACT) is City’s project to address sexual harassment and sexual misconduct and other related inappropriate behaviours.

Background on the Project

The project has been running since November 2018 when the University’s Executive Committee first approved a series of recommendations for tackling sexual harassment, misconduct and violence experienced by students and staff at City.

The project is overseen by the Bullying and Harassment Steering Group, and brings staff and students together from across the University to review the policies, practices and support available to  our City community.

Project outputs

In May 2020, a direct output of the project was the approval of two new policies for students: the Student Harassment and Bullying Policy and the Student Sexual Misconduct Policy.

These policies aimed to bring City in line with good practice recognised in the higher education sector, and introduced informal and formal stages to these processes, making it easier for students to raise and escalate your harassment, bullying and sexual misconduct concerns to the University. To develop these policies, City and City Students’ Union jointly held a student focus group to gather feedback on an earlier draft of the policies.

EMPACT is also responsible for supporting broader policy development for students and staff, evaluating and reviewing City’s Harassment Adviser scheme to make improvements for student and staff service users.