The day-long workshop, which is the only one in Australia to take place outside a major city, will start at 9.30am with participants hearing from Professor Walter DeKeseredy.

The Director of the Research Center on Violence at West Virginia University arrived in town yesterday and clarified the forum's focus on men's role in prevention.

"It's not so much about men taking the lead: it's about men working with women as partners.

"What we have to do each day is focus on the little things.

"I want to ask people to think about everyday when they wake up what can they do to prevent violence against women."

The Green Dot Prevention Strategy was started by the University of Kentucky's Doctor Dorothy Edwards in 2006.

Dr DeKeseredy will draw on its message today.

"Let's say you get up in the morning and you post on Facebook 'Let's think about respect for women today'. That's one green dot.

"Someone else sees someone yelling at a woman on the street and walks over to ask: 'are you okay?' That's another little dot.

"So all these little things that we do can accumulate into something very big.

"I want to demonstrate to people that we all have the power. We don't have to do anything grandiose."

The strategy has particular relevance to Port Macquarie.

"This is my first time here but I can already tell the community is very tightly knit and very well organised," Dr DeKeseredy said.

"I think the community here is ripe for doing an excellent job of preventing violence against women.

A "considerable" part of the day will focus on internet pornography.

"It's one of the things that worries me most at the moment," Dr DeKeseredy.

"It has become so normalised, so violent and racist and the average age of young men watching it is 11-years-old."

"I want people to think critically about the society they live in, and I'm going to help that to happen by talking about a lot of practical, grass-roots actions that are possible."

He said it was not useful to individualise the problem.

"Many people tend to think the violence is a function of some type of mental illness or pathology. But less than 10 per cent of abusive men suffer from some type of mental illness.

"If only two per cent of men sexually or physically assaulted then I'd be among the first to accept individualistic explanations.

"But when you have at least 11 per cent of women in any given society experiencing some form of physical violence in the last year, that tells us about how our society is structured."