Kirk Friedrich: My Path to No Means No Worldwide

I am honored to have been asked by the Board of Directors of No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) to take on the role of Executive Director. I have reflected quite a bit over the past few years on where my passion for this work comes from, and why my path has brought me to this organization. I realized that there have been several important experiences that have attracted me to the mission of NMNW.

First and foremost, my previous work as a professional soccer player in Zimbabwe and then as Co-Founder and Executive Director at Grassroot Soccer plays an important role in my contribution to the mission and approach of NMNW. I learned an immense amount during sixteen years of helping Grassroot Soccer go from startup to scale—ultimately providing health education for millions of young people in more than 50 countries worldwide. The sum of my experiences has given me a unique perspective that positions me well to help NMNW as we follow a similar path to growth. Perhaps most importantly, my work with Grassroot Soccer shaped my belief in the value of working with local partners and positioning them to lead change at a local level. NMNW trains organizations and governments worldwide to implement the No Means No curriculum and works with them as they adapt and contextualize our evidence-based approach to sexual violence prevention for their local communities. Working with partners is not easy. It requires trust, mutual respect, and excellent communication. When it is successful, I believe it is the most rewarding, effective, scalable, and sustainable approach to creating real change. In the past four years, since I joined NMNW in 2018, we have already built a network of more than 80 committed partner organizations that deliver No Means No to hundreds of thousands of young people in 10 countries. We could not have done this on our own.

My passion for child abuse prevention stems from my own family and upbringing. My stepfather is a retired pediatrician who is considered one of the foremost global experts in child abuse prevention. During his career he lectured extensively and wrote and edited several textbooks, including the textbook on child maltreatment that most doctors and other practitioners use to learn about child abuse prevention, detection, and treatment. He dedicated his career to educating doctors, lawyers, police, social workers, parents, and childcare providers about various forms of child abuse. Also, he and my mother spent several years publishing a quarterly medical review journal to share evidence-based child abuse research with a global community of subscribers. He also provided expert testimony in many of the highest profile child abuse cases and was a leading expert in defining and detecting cases of shaken baby syndrome and other forms of physical abuse. When I was in high school, I began to understand the enormous weight and importance of the work he and my mother did. I couldn’t understand how it was possible that they could be exposed to the absolute worst human atrocities day-in and day-out and still come home every evening, eat dinner with our family, and be the jolly and loving parents that they were. I now know that his passion to prevent new cases of child abuse was what fueled the joy and pride he took in his work, and I am proud to work and bring new resources into this field that he pioneered.

I often think about the NMNW staff members and our partner staff who are exposed to daily trauma due to this work. I know they often feel helpless to provide the level of support that is needed by young people who disclose abuse, particularly in the low-resource settings where we work. I hope they are also able to find similar joy, as my stepfather did, in the importance of the change we are making.

There is another event that has strongly influenced my passion for this work: when I was nine years old, I very narrowly escaped a man who I believe tried to abduct and sexually abuse me. I was in a vulnerable situation, in a city park and, having been separated from my older sister, I was upset. A man offered to help me, ultimately luring me into a parking garage and telling me to get into his car so we could go look for help. Luckily, I had heard rumors about a man with a light blue car that had molested children in my town. I saw that this man’s car was light blue, and my intuition immediately kicked in. I took three steps away from him, told him “NO!”, turned, and ran as fast as I could out of the garage. Now that I have learned from No Means No about tactics used by perpetrators of sexual violence and learned the practical skills we teach young people, I replay this incident in my mind on a regular basis and realize how lucky I was.

Perpetrators of sexual violence are often experts at targeting, testing, and ultimately tricking their victims into freezing in these critical moments. We at NMNW teach young people to recognize the tactics perpetrators use, trust their instincts, flee from dangerous situations as early as possible, and master a variety of mental, verbal, and physical skills they can use to protect themselves. Most importantly, we teach them that they are worth defending and have a right to protect themselves against anyone who intends to do them harm. The skills we teach are the same skills I used to escape that day.

Our success to date stems from the tragic and immense demand for simple and effective sexual abuse prevention, as well as the passion and dedication of our partners and the staff of NMNW. I believe that every child and adolescent in the world needs to learn the skills taught in No Means No, and I am proud and humbled to work with and continue to build the team that will make this happen.