Looking Back, Moving Forward: Turning Awareness into Action
Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2026
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). This year’s theme is 25 Years Strong: Looking Back, Moving Forward.
Following this theme, the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect (PCAR) honors Pennsylvania’s over 50-year history in the fight against sexual violence. PCAR’s theme is Looking Back, Moving Forward: Turning Awareness into Action.
Turning Awareness into Action shows Pennsylvania’s journey to ending sexual abuse, assault, and harassment. It honors the survivors, the advocates, and the centers. Those who came before and those who will continue to work to build stronger communities.
This theme asks everyone in Pennsylvania to turn awareness into real action. That means creating safety, supporting healing, and making lasting change. Together we can learn, speak out, and unite to create safer communities and a future free from harm.
Learn more about SAAM and access additional digital resources with NSVRC's Sexual Assault Awareness Month page.
PCAR & NSVRC are both divisions of Respect Together.
How did Sexual Assault Awareness Month get started?
One night. One protest.
One group of women gathered on a London, England street in 1975 to take a stand — the first official “Take Back the Night” — against the sexual violence they often encountered when the sun set.
The annual “Take Back the Night” marches quickly gathered international support, spreading to the United States. In 1978, the first Take Back the Night events in the U.S. were held in San Francisco and New York City. Over time, sexual assault awareness activities expanded to include the issue of sexual violence against men and men’s participation in ending sexual violence.
In the early 1980s, the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCASA) encouraged each state to organize sexual violence awareness activities during the Sexual Assault Awareness Week. By the 1990s the week turned into a month-April. The Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center celebrated the first nationally observed sexual violence awareness month in April 2001.
Since that time, the Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign has targeted a number of issues surrounding sexual violence such as sexual assault on campus, healthy sexuality, sexual harassment at work, preventing violence in schools and speaking out about rape in order to raise awareness and educate individuals on how to prevent sexual violence in our communities.
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect continue to encourage individuals, organizations, companies, schools, elected officials and every member of our communities to make SAAM a part of their activities in April each year.