Listen: Pushing on through Thanksgiving Day (because need doesn't take days off), the 18th of 50 organizations in our Meet The Need campaign is the Alma Center, a group that works with domestic violence in our community from a different angle. When we were first discussing the Alma Center in the planning phases of our campaign, somebody asked, "So what do they do?" and they were answered, "They're a group that works with domestic violence." The images that immediately came to mind were from the back end of the domestic violence picture -- women, children, victims of domestic violence. Work being done on this side of the domestic violence picture is clearly important, but work can also be done on the front end. Acts of domestic violence usually come from men who have witnessed or experienced violence in their own life. What if you try to teach them new behaviors? Establish new norms? Give them alternatives? That's exactly the work the Alma Center is doing. In these pieces, Executive Director Terri Strodthoff explains how the Alma Center works to end the cycle of violence by changing the way men look at relationships:
-What images come to mind when you think about groups working with domestic violence? The Alma Center approaches the problem from a different and preventative angle: