Sharon Love described her daughter Yeardley to be happy, hard-working, honest, humble, and kind. She attended the University of Virginia, where she was a member of the UVA lacrosse team, the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and was about to begin her first job in New York City once she graduated. Only three weeks before her college graduation, Yeardley Love was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend. In 2010, Yeardley’s mother, Sharon Love, and sister, Lexi Love, started the One Love Foundation in her honor to help others avoid the loss and devastation they endured.
The One Love Foundation is a campaign that strives to educate people about relationship abuse and violence. The One Love Foundation works especially with young people to inform them about healthy and unhealthy relationships, the differences between them, and the relationship signs that go along with each. The foundation is heavily based on educating and starting conversations to spread awareness and end the stigma around these relationships. The One Love Foundation believes that knowledge is vital to change the cycle of abuse, and to resolve it, we must talk about relationship abuse and violence even when it’s hard. By educating ourselves and having these conversations, we are not only spreading awareness to others, but also limiting our chances of abuse through the conscious understanding of healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviors and signs.
It is essential to have the One Love campaign and Workshop on college campuses to spread awareness that this type of abuse does happen and is more common than people think. According to the One Love Foundation, young women in Yeardleys age group, are three times greater at risk for being in an abusive relationship than any other demographic. They also found that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men are in a violent or abusive relationship in his or her lifetime, even though 94% of us will never commit violent acts against a partner. The One Love Foundation attributes these statistics to the fact that we continue to stay silent about this issue despite its prevalence. We must push past the stigma of relationship abuse and talk about it openly because it can happen to anyone. It affects all types of people, from many different backgrounds and doesn’t always look the same in every relationship because every relationship and person is different.
In 2015, Lindsay White, a student at the time, started the One Love Foundation campaign at Elon University. Now, Co-presidents Emily Sheridan and Gigi Woodall continue to spread awareness by hosting workshops throughout campus for students and various organizations. At Elon University, a film based workshop called Escalation is used to inform students on the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship and what to do if they find themselves or a friend in one. The film is followed up by a guided discussion to help students understand and process what they watched, educating them and starting a conversation on campus.
When asked why she joined the One Love Foundation at Elon University, Co-president Emily Sheridan said it was because her best friend at the time was struggling with an abusive relationship. “I think at this age, it’s very common for us to feel untouchable like nothing bad will ever happen to us when in reality this stuff happens all the time,” she said. Emily stressed the importance of One Love teaching people to identify the signs of an abusive relationship. Even if the signs are small, education is still crucial. Lastly, she added, “Through every workshop we’ve done on campus, people have reached out to us for advice. It’s nice to know we are spreading awareness, but we certainly have a lot more work to do: to help others identify relationship signs and hopefully use their voices as well.”
The One Love campaign nationally and at Elon works to educate people and start the conversations aimed to spread awareness about relationship abuse and violence. The One Love Foundation believes the more we talk about this issue, the better we will be at identifying it, being less likely to end up in an unhealthy relationship and ultimately changing the cycle of abuse once and for all.
To educate yourself and spread awareness about relationship abuse and violence follow the Elon University One Love Instagram account: @Oneloveelon