OVERVIEW
Finding Our Voices marshals survivor voices, and community creativity and compassion to finally move the needle on domestic violence in Maine, and bring safety, justice, freedom, and comfort to Maine women and children.
Here is how!
Bold, survivor-powered domestic abuse awareness campaigns
💛 the “Break the Silence” posters and bookmarks featuring the photo portraits and quotes from 45 Maine survivors aged 18 to 83 and including our governor, and previously incarcerated women. Learn more
💛 the “Let’s Talk About It” events featuring a panel of survivors leading community conversations on domestic abuse. The program sometimes includes movies, as well as the local police. This tour launched at the Scarborough Public Library in October 2022 and in 2023 brought us to 10 towns from Millinocket to York. Learn more
đź’› Youth Outreach in high schools and colleges and universities. Learn more
💛 Fun fund-raising events include July’s “Into the Light” Foodie Fiesta that raised $24,000 in 2023 and is coming back bigger and brighter in 2024. Look for a statewide Finding Our Voices “Love Yourself” cold-water dip on February 11!
đź’› Book clubs, and art and music projects for incarcerated women at the Windham Corrections Center with Patrisha and Melody Paul, a survivor on our posters who was formerly incarcerated and now is the author of two books and sobriety/recovery coach..
💛 Patrisha’s opinion pieces on Maine life (and death) through the lens of domestic abuse in the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Midcoast’s Free Press. Read more
💛 Patrisha’s conversations with survivors of domestic abuse on WERU-FM Community Radio. Listen here
đź’› Finding Our Voices online bookclub. Learn more
Peer and Community Support
đź’› Twenty (and counting) Maine general dentists, oral surgeons, orthodontists, prosthodontists and dental labs donating FREE, dignified and gold standard dental procedures to women and child survivors of domestic abuse through Finding Our Smiles. Learn more
đź’› $85,000 in 2023 disbursed to Maine women to get themselves and their children safe and rebuild their lives through the Get Out Stay Out Fund.
đź’› Free, online survivor-run weekly support groups including one for women whose children are estranged from them due to the abuse that is run by our operations manager Mary Kamradt.
💛 Children’s Fund: Gifts to children traumatized by domestic violence including Christmas presents, birthday parties, pet grooming kits, music and art lessons, weighted stuffed animals, driver’s ed.
đź’› Free healing experiences retreats including memoir writing, mother-child day at a horse farm, yoga, and songwriting.
Changing the system!
đź’Ş Gathering voices and bringing survivor voices to the decision-making tables in Maine we are changing hearts and minds and changing laws. Ten survivors provided testimony for a Finding Our Voices-generated bill around curtailing early release from jail of DV perpetrators and heftier notification of the victims of this release, that was signed into law by our governor with many of us there in June 2023.
