GET OUT / STAY OUT

The Get Out Stay Out Fund was seeded in 2021 – the same year the nonprofit was established – with a $50,000 grant from Doris Buffet’s Sunshine Lady Foundation. Disbursements have doubled every year as the nonprofit’s network of referral partners expands and more and more women fleeing domestic abuse discover its responsive, nonjudgmental community. Support for the work continues to grow: a recently received $5,000 matching grant from Camden National Bank will offset the huge spike in domestic abuse that goes hand-in-hand with Thanksgiving and Christmas.

According to Patrisha McLean, founder and CEO of Finding Our Voices, “Because of our generous donors and referral partners, $108,000 was distributed to over 800 Maine women and children in the first nine months of 2024.”

McLean said, “In October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we want everyone to know the range of support Finding Our Voices provides to victims of domestic abuse needing to get out of dangerous situations and rebuild their lives. We started with our poster campaign to provide awareness about domestic violence, and over the past few years we have expanded to provide a wide range of services for women and families.”

“Financial assistance through our Get Out Stay Out Fund has forestalled eviction from apartments and repossession of cars, tiding women over in the precarious time between escaping and getting into new shelter, and allowing them to hold onto their jobs. Our payments of overdue storage unit fees allow many women to keep all they own, including photos of their children and official documents.”

McLean added that the funding goes to specific individual needs depending on the circumstances: “Our money has replaced house and car windows as well as eyeglasses smashed by exes. A new front door was delivered and installed to replace one broken by a woman’s ex just as he was being released early from prison for violence assault against her. We also supply gas cards and fund car repairs allowing women to flee, sometimes to another state, when the violent ex is being released on bail.”

What victims have to say

“He isolated me from everyone to the point I have no one to even ask to borrow a dollar,” wrote a woman in her application for Get Out Stay Out funding. “He did it slowly, not liking this person then the next and kept going until everyone was gone. I wasn’t allowed to work or have any money of my own. He needed to control every minute of my day. I was told when to wake up, when to go to sleep...when to shower...how long I was to be in stores...and the consequences were bad if I didn’t obey. He messed with my head so bad... In order to get away, I walked away with the clothes on my back. Starting over with nothing at my age isn’t going to be easy but I know it was the only option I had. Ten years was too long as it was and I didn’t want my daughter to think it is ok for a man to do that to her.”

How the funds are distributed

More than one-third of the funds went to shelter, including short-term emergency motel stays and apartment security deposits. The second most-funded category was car expenses including repairs, registration and insurance, money toward the purchase of used cars, and gas cards.

Other categories of funding where isolation and financial abuse by the intimate partner has created a desperate situation, include legal fees, home security devices, overdue utility bills, storage units, and gift cards for food and clothing. Money is provided to pet-owners for short-term boarding and items necessary for the pet to accompany the family to safe shelters.

Statewide referral partners for this fund as well as the nonprofit’s other resources for women domestic abuse victims include District Attorney’s offices, police and sheriff departments, homeless shelters, DHHS and CPS caseworkers, New Hope Midcoast DV agency, mental health and substance abuse counselors, social workers, and therapists. Women are referred by co-workers, friends, family, and Facebook contacts, and reach out on their own by learning of the group through its bold awareness campaigns.

Other support provided by Finding Our Voices

Beyond financial assistance for Maine women domestic abuse victims, the nonprofit runs Finding Our Smiles, with 30 dentists providing free, dignified, and gold-standard dental treatment, as well as weekend healing retreats and weekly peer-to-peer online support groups.

McLean said that every day gift packages to domestic abuse survivors are sent out from the group’s home office in Camden. These include lovingly-inscribed books, handwritten notes, and handmade gifts from survivors in the Finding Our Voices sisterhood. “This kindness, compassion and support,” wrote one recipient, “reminds me (and I definitely needed this reminder) that I am doing something important for myself and my children, and that I am not alone.”

The nonprofit has a separate Children’s Fund that provides comfort and joy to children traumatized by domestic abuse including piano and swim lessons, summer camp, back-to-school clothes, birthday and Christmas and gifts.

Finding Our Voices is 100 percent donor-funded, with about a third of Get Out Stay Out money coming from creative community fundraisers that serve the double purpose of shining a light on domestic abuse.  This year’s annual July “Into the Light!” Foodie Festival with 60 Midcoast eateries donating proceeds from yellow food and drink menu items brought in $30,000: $20,000 came in from the actor Gabriel Byrne stepping up to host a screening of his movie “The Usual Suspects” followed by an live Q&A with the audience. And $10,000 was collected from a yard sale, pizza party, and art sale from framing gallery owner Christine Buckley and a coterie of her co-workers, family, and friends.

In addition to its plethora of resources for women survivors of domestic abuse, Finding Our Voices carries out a number of ground-breaking public education campaigns. Thousands of posters featuring the photo portraits of 45 Maine survivors aged 18 to 83 — including Governor Janet T. Mills — paper downtown business windows and public bathrooms. Earlier this month at Biddeford High School, the group unveiled a campaign featuring anonymous first-person dating abuse accounts by students.

Finding Our Voices also hosts free public forums on domestic abuse with survivors sharing their experiences in the perpetual “Let’s Talk About It” tour. The next tour stop will be at Portland’s Maine Irish Heritage Center at 6:30 pm on Thursday, October 24 and at the Falmouth Memorial Library (co-hosted by the Merrill Memorial Library in Yarmouth) at 10 am on Saturday, October 26.

About Finding Our Voices

Finding Our Voices began as a multi-media exhibit of Patrisha McLean’s photo portraits and audio recordings of survivors of domestic abuse, launching at the Camden Public Library on Valentine’s Day 2019. The exhibit traveled around the state including to the Holocaust and Human Rights Center before COVID turned it into a poster campaign. The nonprofit was then formed in 2021  McLean pivoted into human rights following the 2016 domestic violence arrest of her then-husband of 29 years, Don “American Pie” McLean. For more information about Finding Our Voices including how to get help, volunteer and donate, visit https://findingourvoices.net