Cultivating Love & Health

in Our Movement and Communities

The Need

Fast-paced workplaces with inadequate pay are the norm in the United States and the domestic violence field has grappled with how to address the power imbalances that perpetuate inequity in our own organizations.

Compounding that, the pandemic continued to present survivors with financial strain and isolation in 2021 and 2022, stretching frontline workers beyond their capacity.

These realities helped ground us in our purpose to nurture sustainability, amplify those engaging their communities on the ground, and develop shared knowledge of cultural responsiveness. As one Partnership member reflected after our webinar on Wellness & Equity Cultures:

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Statewide and regional ​trainings were held to ​prevent burnout, increase ​workplace fairness, and build ​statewide camaraderie.

Organizations increased salaries, ​added benefits and reduced hours ​while creating space for staff to ​express concerns and resolutions ​about equity. During the pandemic, ​they were able to continue providing ​uninterrupted services.

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Prevention practitioners were provided technical assistance and training.

With strengthened partnerships with ​the California Department of Public ​Health, VALOR, and the California Work ​& Family coalition, we created a critical ​mass of people across California who ​were able to build their capacity to ​implement, evaluate and sustain ​intersectional, culturally responsive, ​intergenerational prevention initiatives.

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Key areas of organizational ​change at the Partnership were ​nurtured.

We created space to hear from staff ​through conversations, surveys, and ​evaluations. This resulted in a $300,000 ​investment in salaries, expanded choices ​and greater coverage in medical care, ​and an added 403b retirement ​investment plan. We also added new ​positions, with robust staffing to prevent ​domestic violence and center this ​approach throughout the organization—​and we established the Impact Strategies ​Team to track our transformation.

The Learnings

• We can exercise care toward staff members ​by holding spaces for honest conversations ​about inequities, overwork, pay, and ​benefits.
  
• We strengthen our sustainability and address ​root causes of domestic violence by investing ​in supportive spaces for preventionists.
  
• Our values are practiced in the ways in which ​we communicate with one another and seek ​out feedback, as well as support each other's ​work and deadlines.
  

Centering Survivors' Healing

by Prioritizing Needs &

Amplifying Voices

The Need

It is all too common that survivors are not believed. When it comes to being survivor-centered, listening to their voices and providing space for them to tell their stories can be an important part of a survivor’s healing journey.

Building on the feedback from our first Media Training for Survivors, our Communications team provided an additional opportunity for the trainees to practice their skills and used these

learnings to begin planning a second training.

Additionally, our Impact Strategies team conducted ​listening sessions to ensure that our training, technical ​assistance, and systems change work with law ​enforcement and prosecutors reflected survivors' ​needs. And in 2022, the Public Policy Team worked on ​priority bills that were based on survivors’ input.

100%

Of the survivors who participated in our technical assistance media training

With #WhyIStayed Creator Beverly ​Gooden ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ ​that the discussion was clear, easy ​to understand, and a valuable real-​world example. To help prepare ​survivor trainees for their own public ​awareness work, Beverly Gooden ​shared about the #WhyIStayed ​Movement as a narrative change ​vehicle, the ways she prepared for ​interviews, and how she addressed ​difficult questions.

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Pieces of state legislation were co-sponsored by the Partnership.

These bills aimed to strengthen survivors’ access to housing (SB 914 & SB 1017), enhance confidentiality programs for survivors (AB 1726), and provide financial relief for survivors experiencing debt as a result of coercion (SB 975). This is the most bills the Partnership has co-sponsored in recent years, and all were informed by survivors’ priorities.

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Survivors participated in our ​listening sessions around law ​enforcement and prosecutors.

Survivors expressed feeling fearful, ​judged and shamed. Many identified ​their interactions as "retraumatizing", ​with abuse being minimized. These ​issues are compounded by racism. ​There were also challenges with ​enforcing protection orders. Many felt ​like the pressure to file a case lies with ​the victim and when cases do move ​forward, they are often pled to lesser ​charges without their consent. They felt ​like they had very little control in the ​how process moved forward.

The Learnings

• Passing the mic to survivors requires time, effort, and resources that deserve to be funded.
  
• Storytelling is an effective way to advocate for change, especially when it comes from an authentic messenger like a survivor.
  
• Building a community of trust with survivors is key to understanding their needs and creating solutions that are truly survivor-centered.
  

Addressing systemic oppression

through cross-disciplinary collaboration

The Need

We’ve witnessed a surge of politicized violence during the last year targeting women and gender expansive people. Over half of large-scale shootings include a current or former spouse, or another family member.

This overt violence represents a boiling point that has long simmered under the surface as systemic oppression. Racial, economic, and gender injustices intersect to deepen the severity of domestic violence and survivors’ access to

basic rights. The Partnership addressed urgent needs around gun violence and alternatives to the criminal legal system in 2021 and ‘22.

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Bills signed into law that counter state violence:

Police can compound harm for LGBTQIA+ and Black, Native & Indigenous, and Survivors of Color—and normalize violence against them. The C.R.I.S.E.S. Act (Kamlager) supports community alternatives to law enforcement response, AB 124 (Kamlager) took steps to end the criminalization of survivors, and SB 2 (Bradford) provides for the decertification of police officers for serious misconduct.

$4 million

For grantees to launch ​their own campaigns on ​Gun Violence Restraining ​orders and other protective ​Orders:

We laid the groundwork to support ​rural and culturally responsive ​organizations across the state as ​they inform survivors about ​protective orders and safety options ​rooted in community.

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People registered for our ​Statewide Domestic ​Violence Conference, ​Shifting the Lens, in 2021.

Keynote speakers and workshop presenters described strategies to address the systems of oppression as well as their impacts on survivors, so that attendees could deepen their advocacy.

The Learnings

• It’s critical to educate legislators on the real ​stories behind our bills. A part of supporting ​survivors’ self-determination is bringing them ​to the center of our policy advocacy work.
  
• Making social justice a part of safety ​planning options expands marginalized ​survivors’ access to healing.
  
• State violence is historic and here in our ​present. It inflicts lasting trauma upon Black, ​Indigenous, and Survivors of Color, making ​safety and healing through culture and ​community vital.
  

Shifting attitudes and beliefs

to value prevention

The Need

prevention and weave this strategy throughout ​all of our efforts at the Partnership.

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Media relationships were built.

38 journalists were sent story ideas around solutions and prevention to bring these concepts to a wider audience. 14 survivors and 17 advocates and preventionists engaged in our media advocacy training. It was invaluable to have media-trained survivors and advocates use their expertise to advocate for policy changes. This allowed us to build equity in media coverage by creating an ecosystem with journalists, people in the field with expertise, and survivors with lived experience.

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youth led our Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Campaign.

We built an advisory committee to uplift their voices and provide them with the tools to bolster their efforts. This created the Partnership’s first-ever convening attended and led by youth: over 100 people attended, and we provided support to each presenter and the emcee. 89% said they felt more confident in their activism, 92% said the event felt caring & supportive, and 86% said they would be interested in another youth convening the following year.

$15M

The amount of ongoing prevention funding we advocated for in the state budget to ensure prevention has sustained support.

Ultimately prevention funding wasn’t included, but we spent time educating and informing legislators at the state capitol about the importance of preventing domestic violence.

The Learnings

• Building connections is key to movement building.
  
• Short-term projects are easy to fund. Prevention is a long-term, continuous investment that is difficult to quantify, which makes it difficult for policymakers to commit.
  

Revenue

Expenses

Balance sheet

Grantors

Partnership Staff

• Dr. Aleese Moore-Orbih
• Alejandra Aguilar **
• Christina Nicosia **
• Christine Smith
• Cibonay Jimenez
• Diane Gout, PhD
• Jacquie Marroquin **
• Jamila Lovelace
• Jasmeen Kairam
• Jennifer M. Khalifa Ponce, MSH CHES
• Jessica Merrill
• Jorge Vidal *

• Kimmie Remis, MSW
• Krista Colón
• Lisa Sica, PhD, SHRM-SCP
• Marcella Maggio **
• Matthew White * **
• Megan Tanahashi
• Melissa Guajardo **
• Melodie Kruspodin
• Mercedes Tune**
• Michell Franklin, M.A.
• Michelle Huey
• Michelle Morales

• Miranda Stiers
  
• Natalie Diaz Mondragon
  
• Rocci Jackson *
  
• Treceia Bazemore
  
• Valarie Smith
• Zoë Flowers *

* New staff who joined in Fiscal Year '23

** Former staff who transitioned since ​June '21

Partnership Board

• Colsaria Henderson, President
• Anna Conti, Vice President
• Aiko Pandorf, Secretary
• Gayle Guest-Brown, Treasurer
• Alejandrina Carrasco
• Amanda Jancu
• Cristal B. Gleason
• Dina Polkinghorne
• Elizabeth Eastlund
• Gina Roberson
• Hisham Alibob
• Jeanne Spurr
  

LOOKING ​TOWARD THE ​FUTURE

expanding our social justice ​mission

reproductive ​justice

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe ​v. Wade, we launched into action to ​protect survivors’ fundamental human ​right to make their own reproductive ​decisions. We are proud to facilitate a ​cohort together with VALOR US, BARHII, ​Black Women’s Wellness, and California ​Latinas for Reproductive Justice to ​demonstrate collaboration, clarity and ​consistency in messaging and ​programming at the intersection of ​reproduction, domestic violence, sexual ​violence, health and wellness.

centering ​survivors

Survivors must be at the heart of our ​movement. To enhance our ​accountability to them, the ​Partnership's Capacity Building Team ​will become the Community-Based ​Strategies, Engagement and Impact ​Team—deepening their purpose to ​cultivate new relationships, build ​trust and engage in deep dialogue ​with survivors and communities. We ​will also create a new Survivor ​Network to ensure responsiveness in ​our social change work.

housing ​justice

The housing crisis involves multiple ​forms of homelessness, poverty, and out-​of-reach housing costs—all of which ​displace communities of color. In ​particular, unstable housing and ​homelessness make survivors and ​children vulnerable to new forms of ​violence. In 2023, we will hire a new ​Associate Director of Public Policy to ​create a new and more diverse ​collaboration with local movements and ​advocates, county, state, and national ​housing and homelessness agencies.

Closing Statement from our ​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND BOARD ​PRESIDENT

While cultivating a Beloved Community, we must acknowledge ​complex realities—that people are transitioning to ​environments with less demands, require less hours and/or ​have higher pay. We are also welcoming new-comers bringing ​innovation and vision for creating and sustaining a healthy ​balance in this life-changing and sometime life-saving work. ​The Partnership is grappling with the same challenges as local ​domestic and sexual violence and other social justice ​organizations and movements throughout the state. One of ​our responses this year was to begin reflection work to ​unlearn the norms that create self-inflicted violence and results ​in harm to others.

Closing Statement (continued)

We intentionally prioritized space and time to engage in conversations that invite listening and connection and eliminates ​othering. We are learning to first use the mirror before using our social lens to judge and "other" those who are or think ​differently.

In 2023, we will practice ways of self-love-care and compassion for each other as a way of ending violence. In working toward ​these ways of being, we plan to strengthen relationships with our members and be more in touch with community-based ​programs as well as survivors. For this to occur, we must be physically closer and more accessible. Ideally, we are planning to share ​an office space with a member program, sibling coalition and/or a non-domestic violence statewide partner. We plan to have an ​office strategically placed in Sacramento, Central Valley or Central Coast, Far North and Southern California. We are currently in ​discussion with Strong Hearted Native Women's Coalition for Southern California and just finalized an agreement with ValorUS to ​share their Sacramento office beginning January 1st. We hope to share office space with a local program member in the Far North ​and one of the Central regions.

We will endeavor to lead by example the way to a safer and healthier California and share our learnings with you. I hope you will ​join us on this journey to becoming a Beloved community. — Dr. Aleese Moore-Orbih, Executive Director