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On May 18th
the Alliance and the Home Valley Bank entered into a partnership
to make a safe house in the Illinois Valley a reality! We have
agreed to purchase the current Home Valley Bank building in Cave
Junction and will move our operations there from our present
quarters at the Illinois Valley Resource Center in October of
this year. In recognition of Home Valley Bank’s generosity in
making a major gift of $147,000 towards this deal we’ve named
the complex Home Valley Center for Advocacy, Resources,
Education and Services – Home Valley CARES.
The existing bank structure will be remodeled and turned into an
advocacy center and a safe house will be constructed elsewhere
on the 1.27-acre property. Purchasing the bank’s property and
building represents a significant savings over buying property
and building both facilities from scratch – a savings of
$730,000. And, it means we will have our advocacy center
immediately – given that we’ve out grown our current space, this
development will have an immediate impact on the quality of
services we offer survivors and their children. The Alliance
will now have the space to formalize a partnership with OnTrack
that will create a team (a domestic violence advocate and a
substance abuse counselor) to provide trauma-informed substance
abuse treatment with long-term advocacy support for mothers and
children. Chemical dependency and domestic abuse have been shown
to be closely connected and we are proud to be able to offer
this service. We will be able to offer more classes, support
groups and child care for survivors attending those classes and
groups AND be able to make these offerings in a private and
confidential environment.
Having this facility will also enable us to introduce the
Volunteer Pilot Program that we have been developing! This
program will feature 40 hours of intensive training in domestic
violence and sexual assault and will allow us to add two
volunteer advocates, a volunteer receptionist and on-call
volunteers to help with day to day support such as court
accompaniment for survivors, bulk mailings, outreach, etc.
Our Executive Director, Christine Mallette has been working on
securing a site since she began her position in October 2001 and
says “We’ve taken some pretty big steps when you think that our
first staff person was hired at the end of 2001 and we’re now in
the process of hiring our sixth person! We’ve worked with over
2,400 adult and child survivors since then and built a whole
program as well.”
We’ve come a
long way, but we still have a way to go. To purchase the
property and renovate the building, we need to raise $600,000.
This will allow us to purchase the building and land, and to
transform the bank into an advocacy center. The cost of the
whole project in phase one is $1,066,000 and already we have
present commitments of $475,000. Having a permanent location
will make it easier to raise the balance of the funds needed.
Phase two of the project will involve fund-raising to build the
actual safe house. Having one without the other doesn’t really
create meaningful change. If we don’t have a safe house we can
put survivors in, we can do a lot of advocacy, but at some
point, they’re going to need a home. If they can’t find a home
and they can’t afford it, they have to go back home to abusers
or become homeless.
In honor of
our success, I invite you to consider a gift to the Alliance to
help continue services and bring a safe house to our community.
Imagine a world where domestic violence and sexual assault
victims get the help they need – and imagine how good it feels
to know you are a part of it!
Warm Regards,
Christine H.
Mallette, Executive Director
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