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Who do you serve?
We serve about 2,000 people a year. The women we serve are extremely diverse and come from other countries or are American born victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or trafficking, residing in the Puget Sound Area. Often she is Asian American or Pacific Islander female, frequently limited English speaking, physically or psychologically abused, with children, and vulnerable to threats of deportation and/or increased loss of freedom and power. Our youth and young adult program serves high school and college age men and women students from diverse Asian and Pacific Islander communities.
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What is Domestic Violence?
Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior used to establish power and control over another person through fear and intimidation, often including the threat or use of violence. Domestic violence happens when one person believes they are entitled to control another. Assault, battering and domestic violence are crimes. In all cultures, the perpetrators are most commonly the men of the family. Women are most commonly the victims of violence. Elder and child abuse are also prevalent. Acts of domestic violence generally fall into one or more of the following categories: Physical Battering - The abuser’s physical attacks or aggressive behavior can range from bruising to murder. It often begins with what is excused as trivial contacts which escalate into more frequent and serious attacks. Sexual Abuse - Physical attack by the abuser is often accompanied by, or culminates in, sexual violence wherein the woman is forced to have sexual intercourse with her abuser or take part in unwanted sexual activity. Psychological Battering -The abuser’s psychological or mental violence can include constant verbal abuse, harassment, excessive possessiveness, isolating the woman from friends and family, deprivation of physical and economic resources, and destruction of personal property. Domestic violence escalates. It often begins with behaviors like threats, name calling, violence in her presence (such as punching a fist through a wall), and/or damage to objects or pets. It may escalate to restraining, pushing, slapping, and/or pinching. The battering may include punching, kicking, biting, sexual assault, tripping, throwing. Finally, it may become life-threatening with serious behaviors such as choking, breaking bones, or the use of weapons.
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How is Domestic Violence Unique in API Communities?
Among API communities, domestic violence is often seen as an internal family matter. The decision to leave an abusive situation may result in alienation from a victim's ethnic and religious community due to shame, stigma, and traditional cultural values that often hide, deny, or minimize family violence. Many women we serve have little orientation to American society, speak limited or no English, and don't know how to seek help. Often, women who are victimized are economically dependent upon their abusers. Due to the small, intimate nature of ethnic communities, women of color, refugee and immigrant women, often face peer pressure from families and extended family to keep the family intact and endure an abusive relationship. Women who are victimized may fear and mistrust services providers and authority figures such as police, whom they equate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the threat of deportation. As a result, an API victim may be reluctant to seek help.
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What is community organizing?
Community organizing is the process of building power through: Involving a constituency in identifying the problems they shared and the solutions they desire, Identifying the people and the structures that can make those solutions possible, Enlisting targets in the effort through negotiation, and through confrontation, and pressure when needed, Building an organization that is democratically controlled by its constituency… that can develop the capacity to take on further problems… and that embodies the will and power of the constituency. (source: adapted from Dave Beckwith, University of Toledo quoted in Community Action Training for Third World Organizing, Oakland 1999.)
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What is cultural competence?
The ability of an individual to recognize diverse cultural factors and to function effectively in the context of cultural differences. Elements of cultural competency include: awareness and acceptance of difference awareness of one's own culture development of cultural knowledge adaptation to diversity
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What is a Natural Helper?
The "Natural Helper" program was started by API Chaya to develop bilingual, outreach volunteers who help link people experience dating or domestic violence to services. The volunteers are trainee to recognize the dynamics and warning signs of domestic violence, understand barriers to service in API communities, how to seek out available services for families in need, and help friends in need. The volunteers are the "natural helpers" in the community. They may be hair stylists, café owners, day care providers, teachers, etc whom people talk to. They are the natural community leaders who are always helping others. These community leaders learn the basic information about domestic violence and share it with others. They also become the API Chaya connections to the communities we serve.
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