Community Engagement and
Domestic Violence Prevention

What is Community Engagement?
Community engagement is the process of working with those most affected by an issue so that they become the visionaries and architects of developing the intervention and prevention strategies they deem most effective to create change.  Community engagement involves community organizing, mobilizing, outreach, and education methods.  Put quite simply, community engagement strategies meet community members where they are (psychologically, emotionally, socially, and physically) and harness community energy and assets on issues that affect them.  Community engagement strategies make change possible by unifying and giving voice to community members on a specific issue.

Why Use Community Engagement to Prevent Domestic Violence?
Because domestic violence is traditionally regarded as a private issue, it is easy to see how the problem has been individualized, silenced, and removed from larger ‘community’ concerns.  Yet, this is not the reality of the situation.  Even though domestic violence occurs in the confines of a home or a relationship, its effects and repercussions are felt beyond that.  Statistical and anecdotal evidence shows that domestic violence has ties to street violence, youth violence, lack of civic participation, and poor childhood development, just to mention a few.

Services to domestic violence are traditionally located in institutional settings—shelters, health centers, the police, and courts—making it necessary for individuals and families to go beyond their support network and specific community in order to seek help, further silencing and stigmatizing domestic violence.  In addition, most of these responses are after-the-fact emergency services - including shelter, police, and court interventions - that are often expensive and occur after severe damage has been done to self-esteem and family stability, or they are information campaigns aimed at individuals rather than communities. Because a majority of the resources go to supporting these institutional and government services, friends, family, and neighbors who see the violence and want to help are left deprived of the training and without the necessary resources in order to reach out and lend support.   

Close to Home recognizes the importance of institutional and governmental services.  Because of their courageous work over the last 35 years, domestic violence has emerged from being a ‘way of life’ into something that people can access social and criminal justice services for.  But more needs to happen.

Close to Home’s approach is unique because of its focus on reframing domestic violence as a civic issue that directly impacts quality of life in our neighborhoods. We are working to change the culture of our communities to make domestic violence unacceptable. Through utilizing community engagement strategies, we are knitting together existing resources and services, augmenting their power and usefulness by engaging family and friends in the prevention process.

Close to Home’s approach to community engagement and organizing
Domestic violence is an emotionally sensitive, complicated, and personal issue. Close to Home recognizes that community engagement and organizing approaches developed to tackle public issues (for example, voting or environmental concerns) have to be adapted to work on domestic violence.  To that end, we have formulated some unique strategies in our community engagement approach:

Our Spirit Of Organizing
Because domestic violence lies close to people’s hearts, we believe that working around this issue requires a unique “spirit”, or way of being. The following are some principles that we instill in all areas of our work to create connection and build relationships with people.  We believe that those connections and relationships are fundamental to the success of preventing domestic violence.  Our Spirit of Organizing includes:

1. Creating a welcoming, comforting, nurturing, and safe space for people
2. Creating a space for laughter
3. Building on strengths
4. Recognizing that every individual has something to offer to the cause
5. Working from a place of hope and optimism
6. Building genuine, respectful, and meaningful relationships with people
7. Meeting people where they are—both physically and emotionally
8. Respecting all viewpoints and opinions
9. Responding to differing/conflicting viewpoints with elaborating questions, and a genuine curiosity to learn more
10. Celebrating our relationships and all the little successes along the way

Relationship-Based Process
Relationship-Based Organizing emphasizes building strong, respectful, meaningful, and genuine relationships among all individuals involved in the issue. Close to Home believes that building a foundation of trust and support among all members of the community is particularly important when it comes to effectively working together to develop domestic violence intervention and prevention strategies.  This work of honoring individuals, their personal stories, and the relationships we build among one another is as important as the work of domestic violence prevention itself.

Honoring Community Expertise
Close to Home believes deeply that the work of domestic violence prevention needs to be led and directed by those most affected by it—the youth, residents, and community leaders who come into contact with it daily in their personal lives.  Our programs and the strategies we develop are a result of community input and guidance.  Working with community members and honoring them as the experts is essential because they hold the key to transforming the social norms that currently condone violence into ones that value respectful and healthy relationships.