PUBLIC EDUCATION
Finding Our Voices is moving the needle on domestic abuse in Maine with bold survivor-led Public Education including in schools, and meaningful Resources empowering women to escape danger and misery from an intimate partner, get on their feet, and provide stability for their children. For the Resources page of our website, click here.
Our bold, survivor-powered public education campaigns and programs are:
1) Alerting all about the public health emergency of domestic abuse in our State, and what needs to change.
2) Erasing harmful stereotypes and misplaced shame and stigma on the victims of domestic abuse.
2) Getting students to think and talk—and then educate their peers!—about what is love and what is not love.
Survivor-Powered
Posters & Bookmarks
This groundbreaking and award-winning campaign features the faces and voices of 48 Maine women survivors aged 18 to 85 and including Governor Janet T. Mills. The survivors standing proud and speaking loud in this outreach are smashing the stereotype of domestic abuse, educating all as to how it crosses socio-economic barriers. With the various quotes referencing all kinds of abuse, the campaign also educates about how emotional abuse is also abuse, and how insidious and widespread this scourge is.
Click here to see all 24 of the posters, and let us know if you can help us bring them to your Maine town.
Bookmarks
Our bookmarks are scaled-down and pocket-size versions of the posters, distributed in public libraries and bookstores and food pantries across Maine. Thank you to First National Bank for sponsoring them two years in a row.
News Story HERE about our bookmarks!
Sadie of Brooklin's public library with our bookmarks and three of the survivors featured on these bookmarks, Mary Lou Smith, Christine Buckley, and Finding Our Voices CEO +Founder Patrisha McLean.
AIO Food Pantry in Rockland is one of many social service agencies across Maine distributing the Finding Our Voices bookmarks to provide hope and resources to their clients who are domestic abuse survivors. Alan Kearl, director of AIO, here with Mary Lou Smith holding up the bookmark featuring her and Lily DesRoberts, included a Finding Our Voices bookmark in every food box.
Let’s Talk About It Tour
Our "Let's Talk About It Tour" launched in October 2023 when the Scarborough Public Library hosted our Survivor-Speaks panel discussion. Since then, we have brought domestic abuse survivors sharing their stories to more than 50 communities from York to Millinocket and including a tour of remote islands with the Seacoast Mission.
Our Men Talking event with three men sharing the impact of growing up with violent fathers broke indoor attendance records at the Camden Public Library.
Get in touch to help bring us to YOUR town in 2026!
Bath, May 2025
Maine Irish Heritage Center, October 2024
Camden Public Library, November 2023
Public Rallies
Finding Our Voices is getting louder by the day about the outrages around domestic violence including bailing out and releasing early from prison and jail the most dangerous members of our society. Look for us and join us in a Maine downtown near YOU!
Youth Outreach
Finding Our Voices is working with Maine high school students to identify unhealthy dating patterns and then create posters to educate their peers about what they now know. So far we are booked to bring our impactful and relatable program to six more Maine middle schools and high schools in early 2026. Please contact us here if you can help bring us to a school in YOUR town.
"The Finding Our Voices project started a lot of great conversations with my students. We were even able to keep referring back to it during our Relationships Lesson towards the end of the semester as we discussed consent and boundary setting.”
— Stephanie Gabriner, Health Teacher Biddeford High School
Our anonymous surveys filled out by Maine high school students reveal the dating abuse that our young people are experiencing now.
Maine high school students critically examine the popular culture they consume to identify what is not healthy in dating relationships.
Faye and Tucker with the Pop Culture-Wheel they created based on dysfunction they observed in the relationship between Dean and Rory from The Gilmore Girls.
Other Creative Ways We Are Opening Eyes, Minds, Hearts to the Domestic Abuse All Around Us
Patrisha's conversations with domestic abuse survivors airs as a radio show and Podcast. More info here! She and Mary Lou Smith host an online Book Club featuring conversations with authors about the domestic abuse in their books. More info here!
And for part of how we got here as a country with such rampant domestic abuse, listen to the exploration of misogyny going back 100 years in the Great American Songbook produced by Resa Randolph: A shocking, infuriating selection in four radio programs.