Executive Overview
On a humid summer afternoon in the Bronx, a group of high school students sits around a table, their eyes fixed on an unassuming bag of chocolate-chip cookies. Breaking the tension with a playful grin, senior instructor Ponny White quips, "Just go ahead and eat them!" Laughter ripples through the room, dissolving the afternoon fatigue. For teenagers spending their precious summer vacation inside a classroom, their level of engagement is striking.
These students are not here to remediate failing math grades or master summer reading lists. Instead, they are participating in an intensive, vital masterclass in sexual health, boundary-setting, and the prevention of sexual violence—topics that remain conspicuously missing from the vast majority of mainstream United States school curricula.
White serves as the senior prevention coordinator for the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault and leads Project DOT (Dream, Own, Tell), an initiative explicitly designed to uplift and educate historically marginalized urban youth. Yet, the existence of this program raises a compelling question: Why is a cutting-edge youth initiative in the Bronx receiving partial funding from the Kering Foundation—the corporate philanthropic arm of a French global luxury goods conglomerate that owns elite fashion powerhouses like Gucci and Saint Laurent?
The answer lies at the intersection of grassroots activism and corporate social responsibility. As schools across the country routinely fail to provide comprehensive sex education, organizations like Project DOT are stepping into the void. Concurrently, global luxury giants are recognizing that the fight against gender-based violence requires proactive community investment, employee training, and long-term cultural reform. This report investigates the mechanics of Project DOT, the alarming deficiencies in American sex education, and the evolving role of the fashion industry in combating gender-based violence.
Detailed Chronology: Inside a Project DOT Session
To understand the impact of Project DOT, one must step inside the classroom. The curriculum is deliberately designed to challenge preconceived notions about relationships, consent, and safety.
Breaking the Ice and Redefining Boundaries
The afternoon session begins not with dense legal definitions, but with relatable human dynamics—exemplified by the lighthearted cookie exchange. From there, Ponny White transitions seamlessly into the core curriculum. Through facilitated discussions, role-playing, and critical-thinking exercises, students learn to dismantle colloquial misunderstandings about what constitutes sexual misconduct.
For many participants, the terminology itself is eye-opening. The program provides explicit language to help teenagers identify and articulate a spectrum of behaviors, ranging from unwanted explicit jokes and digital harassment to coercion and non-consensual image sharing (often referred to as "revenge porn").
The Student Experience
The absence of comprehensive institutional sex education means these concepts are often entirely new to the participants.
"For me, I kind of expanded my definition on what sexual violence means," shares 15-year-old participant Maymuna. "I actually did not know what it really entailed for some of the things I was learning. I learned more about what it means to set up boundaries, because I myself kind of struggle with setting them up."
Her peer, 17-year-old Isabella, reflects on the universal vulnerability of young people navigating modern social landscapes: "Sometimes you’ll think, Oh, maybe this won’t happen to me, but everybody’s under the same umbrella of stuff being able to happen to them."
When asked about their regular high school experiences, the consensus among the students is unanimous: formal sex education is practically non-existent. Maymuna recalls her school’s meager offering: "We only received it in fifth grade… and we only had it for, I think, one or two days."
Ashlynn, a 15-year-old in the program, echoes this sentiment, noting the stark contrast between standard schooling and Project DOT. "This is my first time learning something about this and even doing a project on it," she says. "So it’s very eye-opening."
High-Level Observer Presence
On the specific afternoon of this observation, the classroom plays host to high-ranking corporate executives who flew in or traveled locally to witness the program firsthand. Among them are Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability and Institutional Affairs Officer for Kering; Ewa Abrams, President of Kering Americas; and Céline Bonnaire, Executive Director of the Kering Foundation. Their presence underscores a growing corporate commitment to grassroots preventative education.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Crisis in U.S. Sex Education
Project DOT does not operate in a vacuum; it functions as an emergency intervention against a backdrop of systemic educational neglect.
The State of U.S. Sex Education
According to data and advocacy reports compiled by organizations like the Guttmacher Institute, sex education across United States public school systems remains profoundly fragmented, underfunded, and politically contentious. While a majority of states mandate some form of health or sex education, the quality, content, and accuracy of these programs vary wildly depending on zip codes, local school board policies, and state legislation.
- Abstinence-Only vs. Comprehensive: Many districts continue to rely on abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula, which public health experts have repeatedly shown to be ineffective at preventing teen pregnancies or reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
- The Omission of Consent and Violence Prevention: Crucially, topics such as affirmative consent, healthy emotional boundaries, bystander intervention, and the recognition of digital or physical sexual violence are routinely omitted from standard curricula. When these topics are broached, they are often introduced too late in a student’s academic career to be maximally effective.
The Mandate of Project DOT
Established by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault—an organization with a robust, two-decade history of advocacy, victim support, and community outreach—Project DOT was built to address these exact systemic gaps.
According to the Alliance’s institutional charter, Project DOT is a specialized youth development program engineered to elevate awareness around sexual assault and relationship violence. "Through education, leadership development, and bystander engagement, we help build safer, more informed communities," the charter states. By targeting marginalized urban youth, the program ensures that vulnerable populations receive the vital tools necessary to protect themselves and their peers.
Official Statements: The Luxury Sector Intervenes
A persistent question surrounding Project DOT is the unexpected alignment between a local Bronx youth program and the Kering Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a global luxury empire that commands iconic houses such as Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and Balenciaga.
Why Kering Invests in Youth Education
For corporate leaders like Marie-Claire Daveu and Céline Bonnaire, the rationale is deeply strategic, rooted in the belief that systemic cultural change begins with the youngest generations.
"We have to train really young people and the young generations because they are the future," Daveu explained during her visit with Teen Vogue.
This philosophy directly mirrors how the Kering Foundation approaches internal corporate culture. Ewa Abrams, President of Kering Americas, elaborates on how the principles taught in the Bronx classroom translate directly to the boardroom and corporate office space:
"You can intervene and you can educate, talk to your friends, talk to your friend groups. So we actually take that same philosophy as part of the pillars of the foundation work and we train our employees. We have a dedicated policy related to domestic violence. Our employees become the ambassadors. They become, sort of, culturally responsible for doing good in the world."
Abrams notes that the connective tissue between the classroom and the corporation is the emphasis on proactive education: "The connection is really that we take that training component that you’re seeing in the room right now and we bring that to our employee community… So what I actually loved about this particular training, [was that] ‘to educate’ was this repeated concept."
Addressing the Fashion Industry’s Supply Chain Challenges
Beyond philanthropy, the luxury sector faces an internal reckoning regarding gender-based violence. Studies and labor rights investigations have long highlighted that sexual and gender-based violence remains a pervasive issue within the global fashion industry, particularly for vulnerable workers embedded deep within complex supply chains.
While Kering is not currently deploying Project DOT-style educational modules directly to its expansive network of third-party garment workers, Daveu confirms that addressing supply chain vulnerabilities is part of a broader, long-term strategic vision.
At present, the immediate corporate goal is to train all 44,000 of Kering’s global corporate employees. Executives view this internal scaling as an essential step toward solidifying an educational ethos that ripples outward through business partners, supply chains, and consumer communities. "It’s really a way also to raise awareness," Daveu emphasizes.
Future Outlook: Empowering the Next Generation of Changemakers
The ultimate measure of success for a program like Project DOT is not found in test scores or quarterly corporate metrics, but in behavioral changes within peer networks and local communities.
The students participating in the Bronx classroom clearly understand this responsibility. Rather than viewing the curriculum as a temporary academic exercise, they view it as actionable knowledge meant to be shared.
"I think, personally, I will start instilling it into my friendships," says 15-year-old Ashlynn, articulating the ripple effect the program is designed to create. "Because I may not be getting into relationships as much, but I know my friends, and I don’t want them to be in a situation where they experience this type of violence. And if they are, then I want them to be prepared and I want them to know that they can get through it."
The Road Ahead
As Project DOT continues to scale with the backing of partners like the Kering Foundation, advocates hope to see systemic policy changes that integrate comprehensive, trauma-informed sex education into standard public school curricula nationwide. Until that legislative milestone is reached, grassroots initiatives backed by cross-sector funding will remain a crucial safety net.
By equipping teenagers with the language of consent, the confidence to set boundaries, and the tools for effective bystander intervention, programs like Project DOT are doing more than filling gaps in sex education—they are actively rewriting the future of community safety, one classroom at a time.
