CAMP HOVEY, Republic of Korea - In an effort to help educate and familiarize Soldiers with the Army's Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, program and reduce the rate of sexual offenses, the SHARP 360 building hosted an open house for Soldiers from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division on Camp Hovey, South Korea Dec. 13.
Each year, more than one hundred Soldiers become victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and the Soldiers of the 1st ABCT share part of that risk.
The goal of the SHARP program is to teach Soldiers to intervene when they recognize a threat, act and stand up for their fellow Soldiers no matter the time or place, and to be motivated to keep fellow Soldiers safe from sexual assault and sexual harassment.
"The main purpose of today's open house is to get the units of the Devil brigade an idea about the Army SHARP 360 building on Camp Hovey," said Sgt. 1st Class Howard Hawkins, the brigade's sexual assault response coordinator. "We wanted to show Soldiers exactly what types of vignette rooms we have as well as the training environments they could conduct in this facility."
The facility's vignette rooms, also known as scenario rooms, especially interested the Soldiers. The scenario rooms consist of vignettes such as a gym, a shower room, a bar, and a barracks room. Each scenario room is designed to provide realistic scenarios that Soldiers could encounter in their daily lives.
"Basically, the idea behind the vignettes is to go away from traditional classroom instructions to a more powerful instruction," Hawkins said. "Soldiers can facilitate and participate in different climates and learn how they are going to react in each situation. It's more of participation."
During the open house, some Soldiers demonstrated several scenarios to other Soldiers as a real-life application of the training facility.
"I enjoyed the roles that we did in an actual-life scenario," said Spc. Celia Alvarez, a wheeled vehicle mechanic for 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st ABCT. "It really gets you to think because these rooms consist of natural scenarios that you would see in a real life. Here, I could see and think about how I would react, if it were actually happening to me."
The SHARP 360 building is open for any units that want to facilitate SHARP related training, but a unit can use the facility for other types of training as well if there are no scheduling conflicts, said Hawkins.
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