Deana Puccio Ferraro of The Rap Project speaks to Y10 students

On Monday 5 September we welcomed Deana Puccio Ferraro from The RAP project back to Latymer to give a talk on ‘Social Skills for Life’ to our new Y10 students. 

Deana, a former Assistant District Attorney from NYC and criminal lawyer, co-founded The RAP Project, which stands for Raising Awareness and Prevention, in 2012. Having worked as a sex crimes prosecutor, and now a mother of three young girls, she worried that young people were not being educated on the laws defining sexual offences or consent. The RAP Project delivers a variety of workshops to pupils, parents, teachers and corporate clients with its core beliefs that young people should be taught, in an age-appropriate manner, the legal definitions of sexual offences; be able to identify child-on-child sexual harassment and sexual assault; consent; and exercise an understanding of how online porn and social media are influencing attitudes, expectations, behaviours and body image.

Students found the session really helpful and the feedback was wholly positive, like that from Y10 student Elena who said: “I think the RAP speech was very informative and diverse and was delivered with lots of energy . I particularly liked how Deana interacted with us,  drew on past experiences and referenced her time working as the Senior Assistant District Attorney which made it very interesting. The talk was age appropriate, and I felt I learnt some knew things. I would definitely recommend the RAP project.” 

“We have been working with Deana since 2015 and her talks and webinars for our parents, students and staff are always so popular. She’s able to give such incredible insight and advice on what is an important tenet of our PSHCE curriculum ,” said Salli Parra, who leads on the Latymer PSHCE speakers programme. “We’re very grateful to her for coming in today and speaking with our Y10 students, who clearly got a lot out of the session.”

To learn more about The RAP Project, visit their website here.

Author: Karen Dove