Arab American Action Network

 

Established in 1995, the Arab Action Network (AAAN) aims to strengthen the Arab American community in the Chicago area through community organizing, advocacy, education, social services, leadership development, and cultural outreach. AAAN has a long history of working on IPV prevention in a leadership capacity. AAAN prevention services focus on increasing public understanding, facilitating dialogue, and improving coordination of services related to IPV. Specifically, the AAAN collaborates with mosques and churches to provide the largest possible segment of the Arab community with intensive education and culturally and religiously sensitive prevention workshops and presentations. The organization's approach to IPV also takes into account social, cultural, and environmental factors, such as exposure to violence, that often accompany immigrants to their new communities. AAAN is committed to identifying, promoting, and disseminating "best practices" to mainstream organizations and others working in IPV prevention. 

 

Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence

 

The Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence (ATASK) is New England's only provider of culturally and linguistically appropriate prevention and intervention services for Asian survivors of domestic violence. Its mission is to prevent domestic violence in Asian families and communities and to provide hope to survivors. ATASK works with ethnically diverse Asian communities in greater Boston and greater Lowell, communities that have a growing number of Asian immigrants and refugees. ATASK began over twenty five years ago as a grass roots effort on the part of volunteers to address gaps in services for Asian immigrants. Incorporated in 1992, the organization now works closely with community leaders and a variety of groups to challenge the norms that promote intimate partner violence. Based on the philosophy that prevention efforts should start early and young, Asian Task Force's project focuses on Asian youth. Interactive workshops cover topics like teen dating violence, gender roles, and power relations. Through its primary prevention activities, ATASK aims to increase the ability of youth to recognize, prevent, and seek help with IPV issues. Their larger vision is to empower teens to be leaders in their own communities and schools in order to provide education and spread awareness. ATASK also produces and disseminates a "Toolbox" curriculum designed to help service providers, state agencies, and other organizations and individuals to understand and respond to Asian immigrant victims of DV/IPV.

 

Asian Women's Shelter

 

Founded in 1988, Asian Women's Shelter (AWS), based in San Francisco California, aims to eliminate domestic violence by promoting the social, economic, and political self-determination of women. AWS is committed to every person's right to live in a violence-free home. Responding to a lack of knowledge about violence among same-sex couples, the Queer Asian Women and Transgender Support (QAWTS) project targets the LGBT community in San Francisco, California. The project addresses a broad spectrum of LGBT sexual and gender issues. The purpose is to increase awareness and engage API (Asian and Pacific Islander) queer immigrants and refugees in identifying and preventing IPV in their community. These queer relationships are often invisible or portrayed in the media as exotic or negative. The QWATS project incorporates two initiatives: a Chai Chat series focuses on healthy relationships, and a Homophobia and Transphobia curriculum that aims to reduce barriers and increase services for queer API community. As a result of its educational activities, AWS has gained recognition throughout the US as well as internationally.

 

Casa de Esperanza

 

Casa de Esperanza is a national Latina organization which exists to mobilize Latinas and Latino communities to end domestic violence. Rooted in Latino values, the organization proactively addresses the causes and impact of violence in the home through advocacy, community engagement, public policy, research, and training. Based in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Casa de Esperanza has grown from a domestic violence shelter into a Latina organization that uses community engagement strategies to build social capital and increase social connectedness in the Latino community. Strong community ties have been identified as protective factors against IPV. In the Youth Peer Educator Program, young Latinas are recruited for training in leadership, workshop facilitation, and public speaking about IPV. In the Líderes program, Casa de Esperanza identifies adult "natural leaders" in the Latina community, recruits them to participate in a training session around community engagement, and then supports the Líderes when they conduct workshops and presentations. The Fuerza Unida initiative infuses information and resources into the community through two neighborhood-based Information and Resource Centers and by engaging informal Latino leaders to disseminate relevant and useful information through natural networks. Throughout, the focus is on Latino cultural values that are based on family and community strength, mutual respect, and caring for others. Casa de Esperanza has gained visibility for its work across the country and in Puerto Rico.

 

The Center for Pan Asian Community Services

 

The Center for Pan Asian Community Services, Inc. (CPACS) is a comprehensive, community-based organization that serves immigrant and refugee Asian Pacific Islanders (API) in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Established in 1980, the organization's overall mission is to create and deliver culturally competent and comprehensive social and health services. The Center addresses IPV through its 'C3' program, which combines support and empowerment. The term 'C3' is inspired by the compassion, commitment and courage of Asian American women. The focus of the 'C3' campaign is to: promote healthy relationships by honoring culture and fostering community resilience; improve women's social position with employment and literacy skills; develop women's leadership capacities; and foster approaches that build on communities' cultural pride. A signature event is the TEA walk (Together Empowering Asian Americans) that brings a number of associations, religious organizations, educational communities, and representatives of the press and media together for a two mile empowerment walk followed by cultural performances.

 

Enlace Comunitario

 

Enlace Comunitario (EC) is a community-based organization located in Central New Mexico that that works to advance immigrants' rights and to eliminate IPV in the Latino community.  Enlace believes that to prevent IPV, the social norms that tolerate it must be challenged and that the members of the affected community must take an active role in the process of change. EC's IPV prevention project therefore aims to develop leadership capacity of Latino immigrant youth and adults who have witnessed or experienced IPV to become leaders in the anti-violence movement. Enlace has been successful in engaging Latino immigrant leaders to inform and educate the Latino immigrant community about healthier relationships and their rights as IPV victims; in engaging Latino immigrant leaders to educate their community about IPV, and in developing a culturally-specific Latino anti-violence media outreach campaign in Spanish.

 

Korean Community Center of the East Bay

 

The mission of the Korean Community Center of the East Bay (KCCEB) is to empower Korean American communities of the Bay Area through education, advocacy, service, and community-based resources. The multi-service organization provides social services, immigration/citizen services, youth leadership development, and faith-based community building. The Shimtuh project (literally "resting place" in Korean) focuses on the prevention of IPV by addressing the traditional Korean norms and values, particularly male dominance, that contribute to IPV prevalence in the community. Shimtuh targets diverse Korean religious communities in the San Francisco and East Bay (Alameda and Contra Costa Counties) areas. The project performs community education at Korean churches and temples as well as clergy education in seminaries to prepare clergy to conduct IPV prevention work. The project's goals are two fold: promotion of gender-equity and anti-violence norms and practices among members and primary institutions of the Korean American community; and the detection, early intervention and prevention of IPV and other forms of violence against women and girls throughout the Korean American and other API communities.

 

Migrant Clinicians Network

 

Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) is a national, not-for-profit organization founded in 1984 by clinicians working in migrant health. Their Hombres Unidos Contra la Violencia Familiar (Men United Against Family Violence, or HUCV) project works in five Latino farm-worker communities in five states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona and Texas. The goal of HUCV is to change the norms around IPV by mobilizing migrant farm-working men to speak out against it. The principal activity of the project is conducting educational workshops for migrant farm worker men, including creating participant-generated media for disseminating educational messages. The project also aims to create a cadre of male promotores to facilitate subsequent workshops and act as mentors. In a strengths-based approach, the HUCV curriculum stresses building upon positive and strongly held Latino values that can be invoked in opposition to IPV rather than attacking those values that might encourage IPV.