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VAVP

The Virginia Anti-Violence Project

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Our Blog

End Of The Year Changes

May 22, 2020 by Ebony

The Virginia Anti-Violence Project is here to work to prevent violence initially and to be able to provide support to those people who are managing similar toxic and traumatic experiences, while still trying to just meet their basic human needs. Those people are us. Those needs are mental, physical and emotional. They are safe and stable housing, healthy food, financial stability, transportation, access to affordable mental health services, education and the list goes on. 

Human needs have increased exponentially, while competent support systems decrease significantly. As LGBTQIA+ individuals who have been impacted by violence (and that’s all of us), having to also navigate discrimination and ineffective resources only presents more challenges that put us at higher risks for repeating toxic cycles. What kind of ambassadors do we want to be for the mission of addressing and eliminating violence, in all forms?  We can’t continue to rely on those who have no accountability or responsibility to the movement to make the rules about how we heal, educate, and live in community. We need to speak with one solidified voice about who Virginia Anti-Violence Project is, who our collaborative partners are. We understand that what we believe is possible. We do! It is going to take multiple voices and resource streams to continue providing human based services, empowering community, telling the stories of resiliency, and having those stories reach beyond just those experiencing it. 

One strategy to ensure community empowerment is financial stability, by way of fair and consistent compensation for the folks on the ground everyday. For the human beings attending trainings and workshops, using their personal vehicles and voices to meet client and partner needs, balancing their own mental/physical/emotional needs with the demands of the job, and celebrating advocacy accomplishments along the way. Funding is necessary for us to continue providing free services to those who need it most. Being able to relieve some financial burdens while a person is recovering from violence and trauma is a form of activism. Another way to support the mission of addressing the ever changing ways violence impacts our community is to volunteer your time and skills to VAVP. We are in need of community members with skills that will help to significantly increase the organization’s capacity to operate effectively through our Board of Directors. Outreach volunteers, brand ambassadors, are needed to be the unified voice of all those who benefit from the existence of VAVP, now and in the future. Activism looks so many different ways. 

We invite your voice in creating strategies that will help our community to not only recover from experiences of violence and trauma but to also thrive in living into a future where an organization like Virginia Anti-Violence Project, and its partners, are no longer needed. We have plans and several ideas for hosting engagement events in the coming year. VAVP also needs the support of all stakeholders in making these programs available for our community. We hope that you will join us in our next chapter of working to address violence against and within the LGBTQIA+ community. If you are interested in more information, please contact us at info@virginiaavp.org. Please also email me directly at ebony@virginiaavp.org.

~ Ebony Kirkland

Filed Under: Our Blog

SUPPORT HEALTHY LOVE 2018

September 3, 2018 by Ebony

Our Support Healthy Love Campaign is about so much more than counting dollar bills — it’s about building power from within our own communities and creating resources that allow us to determine how the funding is spent to best serve the needs of our communities. From emergency housing, transportation, English/Spanish interpretation and therapy, these funds will go directly to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ folx who have been impacted by violence.

4 Ways to boost Virginia Anti-Violence Project’s #SupportHealthyLove Campaign:

    1. Make a donation! Help us reach our $2,500 goal.
    2. Share our social media kit with your network. Available in English and Spanish.
    3. Like, Share and Comment on our campaign to highlight our fundraising campaign via Facebook, Insta and Twitter.
    4. Invite your loved ones to help us fund our community budget by sharing our photo album of social media graphics. Virginia’s LGBTQ+ community depends on it.

Learn more about Virginia Anti-Violence Project’s services.

Filed Under: Our Blog

We’re Hiring a Program Director!

July 23, 2018 by Ebony

The Virginia Anti-Violence Project (VAVP) is seeking to hire a full-time Program Director. The Director will be responsible for the overall management of the organization and the supervision of all employees using a collaborative working style. Join our team! Download the job description, end of business day on September 24 will be the last day to submit your resume, please send resumes via email to virginiaavp@virginiaavp.org.

We know this is big news! So we’d like to give you some context as we begin our search:

  • Read outgoing Executive Director’s statement
  • Message from our Staff & Board of Directors regarding our transition

We are nothing without our community and would like this search to be very intentional. If you care about the future of Virginia Anti-Violence Project, we ask that you plug in by helping us get the word out to folx that you think would be a great addition to our team. You can help us by spreading the word on social media, don’t forget to tag us on Facebook and Insta: @virginiaavp

Filed Under: Our Blog

Transition: Message From VAVP Staff and Board of Directors

July 21, 2018 by Ebony

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.”

― Octavia E. Butler, excerpt from Parable of the Sower

Over the past few years, the Virginia Anti-Violence Project has grown in tremendous ways. Our staff has grown from two to six. Our services have grown to include free licensed therapy, accessibility in both Spanish and English, emergency services, and wellness-centered events. Our relationships with loving community have grown and continue to grow. We have all experienced the joys, messy lessons, hopes, and opportunities that change has brought. At this point of transition, we are welcoming all that and more, as our first Program Director, Stacie Vecchietti, resigns from her position at VAVP. We wish her well on her journey, with gratitude for the changes Stacie and her stewardship have nurtured.

Most of all, we hope to navigate this leadership transition as a true opportunity to live into our organizational values, especially essential in both the context of a toxic political climate that promotes evil, violence, and oppression and in the context of the United States’ long histories of antiblack, colonial, racist, heterosexist, and transphobic violence. VAVP is committed to showing up for and with our community to end white, cisgender supremacy, knowing that addressing root causes is key to ending violence. We do this work knowing that our communities are resilient and deserve to see themselves reflected in leadership, especially those of our community who are most systematically marginalized. We honor the legacies of all who have contributed to the present manifestation of VAVP, and we look forward with excitement about what (and who) is to come, our future program shifts, and strategic planning to sustain and support our diverse LGBTQ+ communities in healthy, healing, and loving ways. It is our truth that with change, we can shape the future we want.

With the understanding that change and transition can bring up a variety of emotions, VAVP encourages individuals with any questions or thoughts related to this transition to directly connect with us as a resource for community support. VAVP can be reached at info@virginiaavp.org or 804-925-9242.

Filed Under: Our Blog

Letter from VAVP Executive Director

July 20, 2018 by Ebony

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Integrity: the active process of working to have my actions match up with the things that are important to me [my values].
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Exploring the concept of integrity is a part of the foundation of the Queer Healthy Love [QHL] classes that VAVP facilitates regularly. While I had heard the word integrity before I participated in the QHL classes, the process of taking the time in community to deeply understand and identify my personal values and reflect on whether and when my actions match up with my values became a particularly sacred practice for me. The classes also allowed me the space and gave me the language to meaningfully explore my own internal sense of integrity on an ongoing basis.

One of the many exquisitely beautiful and hard things about working at VAVP is that because one of our guiding organizational values is community, and I am a member of the broad LGBTQ+ community, our organizational work often connects with my own individual, and very personal, work. It is at the intersection of my never-done work of trying to show up as a person with integrity, and VAVP’s ongoing work that is rooted deeply in the values of intersectionality and racial justice, that an exciting and messy and joyous organizational evolution is occurring.

As a white cis woman that has worked in the hyper-gendered mainstream anti-violence movement for much of my adult life, I have had enormous opportunities, access, and privilege over the course of my career. For the past three-plus years, I have had the honor of engaging in profound work, both personally and organizationally, as the Director of the Virginia Anti-Violence Project. As the organization has grown and more intentionally leaned into the dynamic work of liberation (and in the process of doing that work, done it’s due diligence to authentically center individuals and groups that are disproportionately impacted by violence within and against LGBTQ+ communities), it has become increasingly challenging to hold the position of power that I have at VAVP and continue to feel a solid sense of my own personal integrity.

The insidious and powerful thing about oppression and privilege is that it operates on all levels. We ingest it, it’s relational, and we perpetuate and build systems in our communities and cultures to maintain the status quo. It’s a machine that if left unchecked, will do exactly what it was built to do, maintain and support white cis supremacy. It seems to me, then, that the work of liberation is about dismantling these systems [and building new ones that support equity and beloved community], doing relationships inherently differently, and individually and very personally embodying liberatory transformation.

It is at the intersection of simultaneously exploring both my own internal sense of integrity and VAVP’s deeply rooted values of building power in intersectional LGBTQ+ identities and communities and dismantling white cis supremacy, that the VAVP staff, Board, and I have started to have conversations about the organization engaging in an intentional process of evolution over the course of 2018. This process will include my leaving as a mechanism to create room for a new team member to join VAVP. This transition will allow space for new leadership, vision, skills, and experiences to help support the organization in moving boldly and brilliantly into the future.
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Integrity: the active process of working to have my actions match up with the things that are important to me [my values].

While I feel an absolute sense of certainty that this is the right path forward for the organization and for me, to be transparent, I am holding a complicated mashup of feelings as we make our way through this unique and creative transition process. I feel an overwhelming and deep sense of gratitude to have had the opportunity to listen, learn, and grow in community with so many beloved comrades within the context of the work of VAVP. I feel so proud of the work that I have been a part of over the years (not just the last three as paid staff, but the twelve before that as a volunteer). I feel some nervousness about what my future will bring. But mostly, I feel so excited about the future and the possibilities that lie ahead for the The Virginia Anti-Violence Project and I can’t wait to see how VAVP’s work continues to unfold in community. I know that amazing work will go on and I know that I will do everything in my power to support the leadership and work that will continue to evolve across the state.

We don’t have many specific answers at this moment about exactly what this transition process will look like over the next several months or what the end result will be. We do know, however, that it will be rooted in VAVP’s organizational values and reflect a vision of the organization’s future that centers liberatory healing work and practice. And we know it’s going to be amazing and beautiful and messy.

Rest assured that as we engage in this process, the direct services, community building, and training/education work that VAVP engages in will continue rolling, so keep talking to us. We’re right here.

En Solidaridad,

Stacie

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Filed Under: Our Blog

The First Black Pride in Virginia!

July 18, 2018 by Ebony

Pride has been a recurring proclamation of queer liberation that has spread throughout the world. Some question the integrity of what Pride has become, because it started with riots and protest as a direct response to over-policing of QTPOC spaces and police brutality, and has now turned to days filled with parties, rallies, and parades. However, because of the origins of Pride, these celebrations are highly important in Queer communities, especially in those of color. Because marginalization of Black and Brown folks doesn’t dissipate in the LGBTQ community, there have been ethnic specific Prides in different regions, and this year is going to be Virginia’s first, right here in Richmond.

This event serves to be monumental, because not only is it being orchestrated by Queer Black folks right here in the capital of the Confederacy, but because it’s going to be a weekend of joy and celebration of identity and all of its intersections during such a turbulent time in history, especially here in the Richmond.

A lot of us spend a majority of our time fighting against the systems placed against us, and this weekend is going to have purpose, and part of that purpose is a celebration of our continued existence and resilience, which is necessary for us to continue to move forward.

We invite you to join the weekend of festivities as we celebrate the First Black Pride of Virginia:

  • July 20, 2017 – Dinner & Drag Show – Come out for the first night of the weekend. Enjoy a pasta dinner and an amazing drag show! Tickets online only $12. At the door $15.
  • July 20, 2017 – Day of Purpose – FREE family friendly event with music, vendors, food trucks, and more. You won’t to miss our “How to Ask for Help” workshop at 11am. Register online on Eventbrite.
  • July 21, 2017 – Official After Party – It’s a party celebrating Black Pride! Get your tickets online $15… prices go up at the door $25.

For more information, contact Black Pride RVA at 804-293-0797.

Filed Under: Our Blog Tagged With: black pride rva, pride, vavp, virginia

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