Prevention work is often quiet work — but its impact extends outward into classrooms, workplaces, community conversations, and moments where harm never occurs because someone had the skills, confidence, or understanding to intervene early.

This year, COMMA Projects continued its long-standing commitment to building safer environments through evidence-based training, creative educational tools, and partnerships that meet schools, businesses, and communities where they are.

In a moment when prevention remains the least funded piece of the violence-response continuum, COMMA Projects served as one of Better Tomorrow’s most nimble, cost-effective, and forward-looking programs.

Impact This Year

Across Northwest Colorado, COMMA Projects provided prevention training and education to youth, educators, restaurant staff, community groups, and workplace teams. Much of this work took place through sustained, year-over-year partnerships - a critical element of prevention, since culture change rarely happens through one-off efforts.

Highlights include:

Good Night Out (GNO) trainings delivered for schools, community groups, and businesses
Interpersonal violence prevention training in development for Rex’s Restaurant Group
Consent and boundaries programs for elementary schools
Teen Dating Violence (TDV) and healthy relationship education for Steamboat Mountain School and others
Collaborative work with Brighter World CAC and Advocates to propose a prevention-centered session for the Steamboat Springs High School conference
Continued exploration of disaster-related prevention, in partnership with the University of Denver’s International Disaster Psychology Program

What We Accomplished This Year

Prevention in a Box: A Major Leap Forward in Community Prevention

One of the most exciting developments this year was the continued buildout of Prevention in a Box, a modular toolkit designed to bring high-quality prevention education into schools, workplaces, and community groups — even when staff capacity is limited.

Made possible in large part through the support of Alpine Bank, this project reflects COMMA’s core philosophy: prevention must be practical, adaptable, and widely accessible to make lasting cultural change.

As the long-term distribution and sustainability plan is refined, Prevention in a Box has become a cornerstone of COMMA’s vision for the next several years.

Good Night Out: A Flagship Training

COMMA’s Good Night Out (GNO) curriculum remained a go-to offering for organizations seeking to deepen their understanding of interpersonal violence, boundaries, alcohol-related safety, and bystander intervention.

This year, GNO trained:

restaurant and bar staff
educators
community volunteers
and others seeking practical, real-world prevention tools

The program’s popularity reflects a growing recognition that safety is not reactive — it’s built through shared responsibility and everyday actions.

Sustained Presence in Local Schools

While this year didn’t mark a major expansion of school partnerships, COMMA sustained its foundational prevention presence through ongoing work with:

Steamboat Mountain School
Steamboat Springs High School (including a proposed conference session with Advocates & CAC)
North Routt Charter School
Hayden High School
SSSD Elementary & middle school classrooms exploring consent and boundaries

In a rural region where youth education capacity fluctuates, sustained presence is itself an achievement — one that lays the groundwork for future growth in youth-focused prevention.

Case Study: Interpersonal Violence Prevention for Rex’s Restaurant Group

One of the standout examples of COMMA’s adaptability came through our burgeoning partnership with Rex’s Restaurant Group.

COMMA developed a sexual harassment and interpersonal violence prevention training program tailored specifically to restaurant staff - a workforce that often lacks access to high-quality, relevant prevention education.

This project demonstrated:

the real-world demand for practical workplace prevention
the need for sector-specific approaches
COMMA’s ability to translate academic prevention models into engaging, accessible training

The Road Ahead

Looking toward 2026, COMMA Projects is preparing to:

Expand Prevention in a Box availability and pilot its first broader distribution strategy
Deepen partnerships with workplaces seeking tailored prevention training
Maintain and strengthen prevention presence in local schools
Build out additional content areas (e.g., restorative justice skill-building, conflict navigation, and healthy relationship frameworks)
Continue exploring prevention in the context of disasters and community emergencies, an emerging need in rural communities

COMMA’s future is rooted in the belief that prevention only works when it is repeated, reinforced, and supported across many parts of a community.

Funding Challenges & Why Support Matters

Prevention work has long been the most underfunded component of violence-response systems — locally and nationwide. This is true even though prevention is:

the least expensive program to operate,
the most cost-effective long-term, and
the only approach that reduces harm before it happens.

COMMA Projects accomplishes a remarkable amount with very limited resources. But sustained community prevention requires stable, predictable funding — especially as demand from schools and workplaces increases.

A Clear Ask for This Giving Season

Your support ensures that prevention remains possible in the Yampa Valley.

A gift to COMMA Projects helps bring evidence-based prevention education to youth, workplaces, and community members — creating safer environments long before a crisis occurs. It supports innovative tools like Prevention in a Box, keeps flagship programs like Good Night Out accessible, and strengthens the systems that protect our community’s long-term wellbeing.

Thank you for investing in upstream solutions — and for believing in a future where prevention is prioritized, resourced, and valued.

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Discover COMMA Projects - 2025 Year in Review