We are in the News! New York Nonprofit Press: “Project Speak Out” Creates Pan-Asian Voice Against Domestic Violence

The New York Nonprofit Press mentions our work in their current newsletter below.
http://nynp.biz/March3011.html

“Project Speak Out” Creates Pan-Asian Voice Against Domestic Violence

Four Asian American domestic violence agencies recently received funding to launch Project Speak Out, the first large-scale pan-Asian community education and domestic violence prevention campaign in New York City. The New York Asian Women’s Center (NYAWC), the lead agency, was awarded a $200,000 matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Local funding partners including the Asian American Federation, The Grace and Mercy Foundation, Korean American Community Foundation, Ong Family Foundation and Tiger Baron Foundation have contributed matching grants totaling $150,000 so far.

Distributed over two years, the grants will enable NYAWC and its partners—Garden of Hope, Korean American Family Service Center and Sakhi for South Asian Women—to recruit volunteers from the community to foster attitudinal change about domestic violence and engage in a community-wide movement to stop abusive behavior.

NYAWC estimates that 100,000 Asian women in New York City will be abused by their significant others in their lifetime.

“Because domestic violence is viewed as a private family matter, the community is often silent in response to abuse,” says Tiloma Jayasinghe, Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian Women. “This perception ends up condoning violence and discouraging women from speaking out or seeking escape. When they do try to seek help, they are often punished with blame, stigma and shame.”

With a combined 72 years of experience and expertise in working with domestic violence survivors, the four agencies will challenge the way in which the Asian American community views and reacts to domestic violence. Project Speak Out will recruit volunteers from within the pan-Asian community to involve groups and individuals in this grassroots initiative. With a shared understanding of the nuances of domestic violence in the Asian culture, this network of activists will send a clear message that violence against their mothers, sisters and daughters will not be tolerated. Project Speak Out will also inform survivors of their rights and available assistance and encourage them to seek help.

“Project Speak Out is an extraordinary program made possible by extraordinarily visionary funders,” says NYAWC Executive Director Larry Lee. “Through this initiative we will be able to prevent and reduce domestic violence and give hope to abused women and their children. Together, four Asian domestic violence agencies will make a concentrated, coordinated effort to encourage our many Asian communities to lend their voice to often silent victims. And, by speaking out, members of our communities will reinforce Asian traditions of non-violence and respect for and protection of all family members.”

To volunteer for Project Speak Out, please contact NYAWC’s Project Speak Out Manager at jarifa@nyawc.org or 212-732-0054 ext 163. For more information about NYAWC’s services for women, please call its 24/7 toll-free multilingual hotline at 1-888-888-7702.

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The Reasons Men Abuse: CONNECT Training on Domestic Violence

On March 25, I joined Ted Kang, my Project Speak Out team partner from Korean American Family Services Center at the CONNECT course on “Understanding Domestic Violence: Essentials and Intersections.”  We will be at the training for the next three weeks. 

It was great to see the packed room for the training: there were about 30 attendees, including us.  The only thing I hoped were different was the gender ratio – there were only two men taking the course, including Ted.  My disappointment was somewhat lifted to find that two of the three trainers were men. 

During the course of the training, we were reminded during a documentary presentation by Jackson Katz why men MUST get involved in the anti-domestic violence field for any changes to happen.  It seems counter-intuitive to make domestic violence an issue for the majority of victims – women – when we should be targeting the majority of perpetrators – men.  Here are some U.S. Department of Justice statistics to remind us why:
•    Men perpetrate the majority of violent acts against women: about 90%
•    1 in 4 men will abuse their partner
•    Over 95% sexual perpetrators are men
•    In 92% of all domestic violence incidents, crimes are committed by men against women
•    Annually, compared to males, females experience over 10 times as many incidents of violence by an intimate partner
•    Men will rape 1 out of 6 women and commit more than 300,000 acts of rape and sexual assault every year

Katz points out why it is not man-hating to discuss the majority of perpetrators of violence – men. 
•    76% of the violence men commit is against other men
•    Men commit 90% of all violence – whether directed toward other men or women

The trainers discussed our patriarchal culture being responsible for men’s violence.   Our misogynistic culture harms both men and women, with a narrative that sees men as violent, unemotional, sex-crazed brutes who cannot help but harm women.  It denies men the intelligence they possess, making it acceptable for them to be violent toward others and themselves.  Trainer Quentin Walcott demonstrated this idea well when citing how he broke his rib cages while playing football.  When he was first injured and thought of sitting on the bench, before breaking his bones, he remembered his mother’s voice telling him to “man up” as a child.  If our patriarchal culture did not intervene, he would not have had to endure the broken bones.

During one of our exercises, we were asked to list all the different reasons men abuse.  Everything from alcohol abuse to jealousy to mental problems was listed.  At the end of the exercise, the trainers told us the single reason why men abuse – they choose to.  Most of those men do not hit their co-workers or other people in their lives when they get angry.  They use anger as an excuse to hit women because they know they can get away with it.  This is exactly why sending abusers to anger management classes does not help – they know exactly how to control their anger.  They use anger as a tool to control their partners; sending men to anger management makes them only more cunning.  

There were many more interesting topics brought up during the course of the day.  Some of my tweets from the day are below:

•    Just had a passionate debate wi domestic violence advocates RE spanking. Some say its ok #VAW #IPV

•    Flaming faggot comes from burning men during witch burnings who supported the women considered witches #fem2 #VAW

•    1 way dominant group stays in power is by not being discussed: when we discuss race we think minority races but not white

•    Quentin Walker talks RE crying when he broke his ribs "what is this water coming out of my eyes?" male #fem2

•    NYC schools receive funding based on number of kids on medication, making them push meds on kids #fem2 #edu

•    Having difficulty doing exercise on why men abuse. Its because someone CHOOSES to #VAW #IPV #DV

•    A woman just protested to being vilified 4 crimes of past racist whites & wants us to just move on #racism

•    Origin of word Hispanic=his+panic. GOP came up wi term instead of Latino to discuss Spain origin instead of own nation

•    2 men & 25 women @ CONNECT NYC training RE domestic violence. Plus 2 men & 1 woman trainer. We need more male #fem2 #VAW

•    At the CONNECT NYC training on domestic violence for my job @ProjectSpeakOut. Only 20% victims report #VAW #DV #IPV

Sincerely,

N. Jerin Arifa

Project Speak Out Team

New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

New York Budget Cuts - Hurting Already Disadvantaged Women!

As if it wasn't challenging and painful enough to be a low-income, immigrant woman in New York City!

The New York Women's Foundation released a report on March 23rd, that assesses the impact proposed budget cuts in NYC which found that

"low–income women in New York City bear a disproportionate burden in Governor Cuomo’s proposed budget. As such, they are placed at even greater risk of entrenched poverty, physical, emotional and sexual violence, poor health and other factors that contribute to long–term economic stagnation. Many of the proposed budget cuts disproportionately affect single mother heads of households and women holding lower–paying jobs in the public and nonprofit sectors"

See the gender budget analysis here:   http://bit.ly/fStVwZ

Sethu Nair
Project Speak Out Team
Sakhi for South Asian Women

Activism Works! TANF Funding Restored: Call Gov Cuomo to Restore the Work Advantage Program, Also

Thanks to every one of you who called, visited your New York State Senator and Assembly member,  and took other actions to restore the TANF Funding to help Domestic Violence victims and others.  Although Governor Cuomo's budget proposed complete elimination of this program, your activism resulted in the New York State Senate and Assembly restoring the funding.  


However, the battle is not over.  Even though New York City is agreeing to back efforts to restore the Work Advantage Program (WAP), which helps Domestic Violence Victims obtain housing after leaving shelters, Governor Cuomo is still reluctant to restore funding. Please call his office at (518) 474-8390 and ask for restoration of funding for WAP.  Right now, calling him rather than other legislators is the best tactic.


Here are some talking points:

• We need the State to fund Advantage for existing tenants to avoid mass evictions and homelessness 
• We need the State to fund some form of Advantage for current shelter residents to provide a realistic re-housing option – an improved Advantage would include flexibility on time limits, and meaningful access to services and education among other reforms.  What we need is for folks in the City and State to come together to discuss the options and broker a compromise.  
• We agree that the City should utilize federal resources for the homeless and make reforms to Advantage to make it work better and are asking them to do so 
• Encourage support for a tax surcharge with an extra 1% for individuals making over $200,000 or families making over $300,000 with a bump to 2% for incomes over $500,000  

Overall message:  
Effective, stable permanent housing programs are more cost effective than prolonged shelter stays.  Eliminating funding for Advantage would have terrible consequences for tenants and landlords destabilizing communities and families.  It would cost enormous sums in shelter expenses, eviction costs, loss of rental income for landlords and more importantly would devastate families, creating long-term negative impact and cost.  


Please distribute widely.


Thank you!


Sincerely,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Critical Issues Facing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

The White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) released some Key Facts and Data.  Some of the facts are highlighted below, which dispel the model minority myth, and compound the work we are trying to do at Project Speak Out.

Critical Issues Facing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

DEMOGRAPHICS

• AAPIs represent over 30 countries and ethnic groups that speak over 100 different languages.

POVERTY

• Asian Americans living below poverty: 12.6% (U.S. average living below poverty: 12.4%).
• Poverty Rates of Hmong: 37.8%; Cambodian: 29.3%; Laotian: 18.5%; Vietnamese: 16.6%.

HEALTH

• High rates of limited English proficiency compound the obstacles AAPIs face in achieving good health. Many AAPIs in the U.S. cannot communicate effectively with healthcare providers.
• (Another proof of the need for better sex-ed in our community) Hepatitis B chronically infects about 1.3-1.5 million people in the U.S., and AAPIs account for over half of the chronic hepatitis B cases and resulting deaths.

EDUCATION

• Nearly one out of four AAPI students is Limited English Proficient and/or lives in a linguistically isolated household where parents have limited English proficiency.
• The high school drop-out rate among Southeast Asian Americans is staggering: 40% of Hmong, 38% of Laotian, and 35% of Cambodian populations do not complete high school.

LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT

• In a Gallup Poll, 30-31% of AAPIs surveyed reported incidents of employment discrimination, the largest of any group, with African Americans constituting the second largest at 26%.
• AAPIs only filed about 2-3% of the total employment discrimination complaints received by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against private employers.

IMMIGRATION

• AAPIs make up one of the fastest growing racial groups in the U.S., constituting about one-third of the one million legal immigrants who enter the U.S. annually.
• Nearly two-thirds of AAPIs are foreign-born.

HOUSING

• According to a study undertaken by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, one in five AAPIs experience discrimination in the rental and home buying process.
• AAPIs have suffered the largest percentage decline in homeownership of any racial group.

Sincerely,

N. Jerin Arifa

Project Speak Out Manager

New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Pregnant Asian women die at twice the rate of white pregnant women

As reported on this story from Women's eNews, pregnant Asian women die at twice the rate of white pregnant women in NYC.  Lack of prenatal care is one of the factors, especially since some of these Asian women have language and immigration barriers.

Another factor, although undocumented, might be domestic violence.  Pregnant women are 60.6% more likely to be beaten than women who are not pregnant.  Violence is cited as a pregnancy complication more often than diabetes, hypertension or any other serious complication.


This is another reason why Project Speak Out was created - to change community attitude and behaviors that allow perpetrators to beat and abuse one of the most helpless, yet necessary, group in our society - pregnant women.  


Sincerely,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Why Doesn't She Leave? The Answer about Domestic Violence Victims

In the Domestic Violence filed, one question comes up over and over again - Why doesn't she leave?  Next time someone asks you that question, or you are wondering the same thing yourself, please read the following two stories.  They prove why many victims don't leave - it becomes the most dangerous when a victim tries to leave her abuser and become a survivor.

Wife of ex-NYPD cop missing, feared dead

An excerpt:

Police are searching for a Bronx mother of four who has been missing since last Friday and is feared dead.

Tina Adovasio, 40, a nurse, had been fighting with her estranged husband, Edwin Coello, 40, a former NYPD police officer.

Adovasio filed for divorce just a month before going missing. Police responded to four domestic violence complaints over the course of her marriage with Coello.

“As a survivor of domestic violence, it doesn’t look good,” said Tanya Mcleod, a domestic violence survivor and senior campaign organizer of Voices Of Women. “When victims of domestic violence take 

a stand, that’s when their lives are at high risk.”

Eric Persaud, Queens man who burned girlfriend's face with hot iron, sentenced to 13 years in prison

An excerpt:

...Persaud, 36, flew into a rage on April 30, 2009, because he was upset that she'd called 911 a week before when he smashed her phone and computer. He promised to kill her if she called the cops again.

...Persaud called the woman hundreds of times from Rikers Island, begging her not to testify against him. 

Sincerely,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Domestic Violence Perpetrators hurt more than just their partners

The following is an example of how domestic violence perpetrators harm more than just their partners.  This is exactly why at Project Speak Out, we want to change the culture that permits and perpetuates domestic violence by changing community attitudes and behaviors toward it.


Sincerely,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Man’s Arc of Domestic Abuse Led to Death of an Officer

By LIZ ROBBINS

Published: March 14, 2011

An excerpt: ...

There were punches to the head, slams into a wall and threats of killing. Other times, there was simply a menacing presence outside a window.

These were only some of the acts that at least two women ascribed to George Villanueva and reported to the police over the last 12 years.   Mr. Villanueva, 42, of Brooklyn, who the police said had a long history of domestic violence, had been arrested 30 times in the last two decades. 

...On Monday, Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement that he questioned a system “that allows a vile and violent career criminal with scores of arrests for violent offenses to continue to walk our neighborhoods.”

...

$50 logo contest for Project Speak Out

Are you good with graphics?   Or know someone else who is?  Win $50 by designing our logo!   We want a logo to use on all our outreach materials for Project Speak Out.  We are hoping it will be something simple, so we would be able to draw it by hand, also.  Send an email with the jpeg of the logo to jarifa at nyawc.org.  Thanks!


To give you an idea, here are the logos of the four partner agencies, but the Project Speak Out logo does not have to have anything in common with the four logos below.

In Solidarity,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center
Facebook Page: ProjectSpeakOut 
Twitter: @ProjectSpeakOut

Help Us Translate Project Speak Out in Asian Languages

One of the main goals of Project Speak Out is to be culturally sensitive and language accessible to all Asian Americans. You can help!  Help us Translate "Project Speak Out" in Asian Languages.  Here is a very partial list of  languages we need:  

1. Bengali
2. Cantonese
3. Gujarati
4. Hindi
5. Japanese
6. Korean
7. Sinhala
8. Malayalam
9. Nepali
10. Sylheti
11. Punjabi
12. Tamil
13. Thai
14. Urdu
15. Vietnamese
16. Mandarin
17. etc..

Please comment on this post with your translation or email us at jarifa at nyawc.org  Thanks!


In Solidarity,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Manager
New York Asian Women's Center
Facebook Page: ProjectSpeakOut 
Twitter: @ProjectSpeakOut

Celebrating Women, Breaking Silences, Speaking Out

Today is a remarkable day in the lives of women worldwide.  March 8, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.  It is a time of celebration, and reflection of the long way women have come and  how much we have accomplished.

As I reflect on the challenges and the accomplishments, the one thing I realize is that it is our commitment to work together that brought us this far. Like Audre Lorde once said, "Without community, there is no liberation."

In honor of our collective sense of community, I find that there is no better day than today to bring attention to a very important project initiated by four community organizations dedicated to ending violence against women:  PROJECT SPEAK OUT.

Project Speak Out is a concerted effort by four Asian American anti-violence community agencies to change individual and community attitudes and behaviors toward intimate partner violence/domestic violence in New York City’s Asian American community.

Secrecy and silence and traditional ways of thinking have reigned too long to enable and perpetuate violence.

The four agencies listed below will pool their knowledge and experience working with their constituencies to debunk the culture of silence and to unveil the secrecy of domestic violence.

Here are the four Project Speak Out Partner Agencies

New York Asian Women's Center 


Sakhi for South Asian Women

Korean American Family Services Center 


Garden of Hope

What will be done

Project Speak Out will challenge cultural prohibitions by 

1) increasing awareness of the problem of domestic violence and recalibrate social norms making violence more unacceptable

2) confronting the social conditions and community structures that contribute to violence 

3) building networks of community leaders that can continue the transformative work of eliminating violence against women.

Project Speak Out’s ultimate goal is to increase the awareness and change attitudes around domestic violence in the Asian American communities in Queens, one community member and group at a time.

How it will be done 

The 4 partners will organize a grass roots, person-to-person approach to community education and outreach. 

We will engage groups and individuals in a culturally specific manner with goals of educating, fostering attitudinal change about intimate partner violence and engaging them in a community-wide movement to stop domestic violence. 

We will recruit and train 200 volunteers to go into Asian neighborhoods and meet with the leadership and members of religious organizations; service clubs; community leaders; Asian ethnic affinity groups; Parent-Teacher Associations; and, legal, health, and human service organizations. Project Speak Out will hold 4 study groups and 2 rallies in specific ethnic communities. 

We will establish 4 action groups – particularly organizing an “Asian American Men Against Violence” group. Collectively the 4 partners will extensively engage 1,600 individuals/groups. 

You, me and all of us together form our community. This initiative is not possible without you. If you are interested in participating in Project Speak Out, being trained to go and speak in your own communities, please use this blog as your forum.

I am one of four others who will keep you informed about all Project Speak Out activities. Please feel free to reach out to all of us. 

Warmly,

Sethu Nair
Project Speak Out Team