OVERVIEW
Finding Our Voices marshals survivor voices, and community creativity and compassion to finally move the needle on domestic violence in Maine, and bring safety, justice, freedom, and comfort to Maine women and children.
Here is how!
Bold, survivor-powered domestic abuse awareness campaigns
💛 Our groundbreaking posters feature named, Maine survivors of domestic abuse aged 18 to 85. In downtown business windows and public bathrooms in more than 100 Maine towns, they let women still trapped in domestic abuse know 'You are not alone' and ‘this is a pattern’, while alert and educating the public about how domestic abuse is all around them, and can happen to anyone. As you travel across Maine, how many of us can you see and hear? Learn more
💛 the “Let’s Talk About It” events featuring a panel of survivors leading community conversations on domestic abuse. The program sometimes includes movies, as well as the local police. This tour launched at the Scarborough Public Library in October 2022 and in 2023 brought us to 10 towns from Millinocket to York. In 2024 we visited 20 communities, including three remote islands with Seacoast Mission, and at the Maine Irish Heritage Center in Portland, Botanical Gardens of Boothbay, and Community Center of Eastport. Learn more
💛 Youth Outreach in high schools and colleges and universities. Learn more
💛 Bold and innovative fund-raising events include July’s “Into the Light” Foodie Festival that raised $28,000 in 2024 and is coming back bigger and brighter in 2025.
💛 Patrisha’s opinion pieces on Maine life (and death) through the lens of domestic abuse in the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Midcoast’s Free Press. Read more
💛 Patrisha’s conversations with survivors of domestic abuse on WERU-FM Community Radio, plus her podcast, including on WMPG Portland.
💛 Finding Our Voices online bookclub. Learn more
Peer and Community Support
💛 Thirty Maine general dentists, oral surgeons, orthodontists, prosthodontists and dental labs donating FREE, dignified and gold standard dental procedures to women and child survivors of domestic abuse through Finding Our Smiles. Learn more
💛 $275,000 in three years disbursed to Maine women to get themselves and their children safe and rebuild their lives through the Get Out Stay Out Fund.
💛 Free, online survivor-run weekly support groups.
💛 Children’s Fund: Gifts to children traumatized by domestic violence including Christmas presents, birthday parties, pet grooming kits, music and art lessons, weighted stuffed animals, driver’s ed.
💛 Free healing experiences retreats including memoir writing, mother-child day at a horse farm, yoga, and songwriting.
Changing the system!
💪 Gathering voices and bringing survivor voices to the decision-making tables in Maine we are changing hearts and minds and changing laws. Ten survivors provided testimony for a Finding Our Voices-generated bill around curtailing early release from jail of DV perpetrators and heftier notification of the victims of this release, that was signed into law by our governor with many of us there in June 2023.
