S8 E4 Honoring Lives Lost, Standing with Survivors

Thank you, Zakia.

After hearing this discussion, one thing came up to me that we need to do a lot of outreach.

We need to increase our engagement with our community and educate them more.

And we are doing with our fantastic volunteers and staff members.

We are doing a lot.

Thanks to all of you.

Last year, we got visibility at 145 community touch points through booths, presentations, film screening, media publications.

And you all know that we are extensively using our online channels.

posting different kinds of articles.

And we are publishing horrific stories, homicide or DV cases that is frustrating, sad.

But we are also, but we have to post this because we need to show the reality to our community members.

But at the same time, we are posting a lot of positive news that if any new bills, any new bills are getting passed, anything is happening in this prevention movement in favor of our survivors.

If you go to our website, you will see we have translated many important information materials in multiple major South Asian languages that we believe people can get help from there.

We are using our podcast extensively to bring the discussion on the forefront.

But ending DV prevention of domestic violence, it cannot be only our responsibility, only survivors or domestic violence advocates' responsibility.

System can play a big role and we need to gain visibility with policymaker system.

So what we did last year, we reached out to 11 city councils.

And we asked them to recognize October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

And if you want to know the cities, we can go to our website.

You can see that like Mountain View, Saratoga, Milpitas, Cupertino, San Jose, Santa Clara, multiple, Livermore.

I don't know, I missed any city.

We are doing the same thing this year also.

Last year, we also joined a big group of domestic violence advocates.

We went to Sacramento State Capitol to talk to policymakers on how they can help in making right policies.

Sometimes people ask us that, you know, what is the point? Apparently, you are receiving a proclamation, you are meeting policymakers, and then what? I would say that we cannot expect change overnight.