Growing our community services, prioritizing
sexual assault prevention
By Melissa Koepp
(January 26, 2010) SafePlace is excited to share the news
of our recent restructure. “Since
we completed our new shelter in 2007, SafePlace has identified
Community Services as our focused priority. The changes we
have put in place are laying the groundwork to increase our
community presence,” says Mary Pontarolo, Executive
Director. To accomplish this goal, we have made some staffing
changes in the past few months, particularly in our Community
Services area. “We reprioritized some funding, allowing
us to add hours to sexual assault prevention outreach,” adds
Mary.
Changes to our community services department include hiring
a new, part-time sexual assault advocate, a 10-hour a week
Spanish-speaking advocate, and increasing our education position
by 5 hours a week.
Amory is the new Sexual Assault Services Advocate. We are
excited that Amory will focus on strengthening and stabilizing
our Sexual Assault Response and Prevention (SARP) program.
She also plans to expand our sexual assault services and
focus on increasing prevention work in our community.
In order to support our growing Spanish-speaking Program,
we have added Carolina to our staff as a 10-hour a week Spanish-speaking
advocate. Carolina will work with Alejandro on the weekly
Spanish-speaking support group, as well as mentor our growing
group of Spanish-speaking volunteers, and provide bilingual
advocacy to our clients.
In an effort to work with different community groups and
populations on developing prevention strategies, we have
increased the hours of Sandi, our Education and Training
Specialist. This will give her more time to focus on prevention
outreach, a critical component to realizing our mission of
a violence-free community.
SafePlace staff are very excited about these changes, and
the growth potential they build for strengthening our services
to survivors of sexual and domestic violence. |
