DOJ Dollars for D.C.
New federally funded campaign promotes healthy LGBTQ relationships locally
Fill in the blank.
That’s what Morgan Lynn, supervising attorney at Women Empowered Against Violence Inc. (WEAVE), and others, asked LGBT people and allies to do during this year’s Capital Pride Festival with the following sentence: ”Show me love by [blank].”
”There’s been messages all the way from, ‘Respecting me for who I am,’ to ‘Sharing your pillow with me,”’ Lynn says of the hundreds of entries that will soon be posted online.
The messages are part of a new WEAVE campaign titled “Show Me Love DC,” which aims to provide information to people affected by intimate partner violence (IPV) in LGBTQ communities. Show Me Love DC launched on June 1 and is the first program of its kind to be funded by the Department of Justice’s Office of Victims of Crimes and Office of Justice Programs.
According to Lynn, the department granted WEAVE a one-time $75,000 grant to be used over the next two years to fund the effort.
Lynn, who specializes in working with LGBT victims of domestic violence, serves in the campaign alongside representatives from other local organizations such as Transgender Health Empowerment (THE) and the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL). Other groups collaborating with the campaign include the Rainbow Response Coalition.
”[Show Me Love’s] focus is on public awareness, outreach and educating the general public by providing resources, which is awesome because Rainbow Response is not focused on direct services,” explains Amy Loudermilk, Rainbow Response co-chair.
The Show Me Love DC campaign will work to educate LGBT people about IPV in two ways, primarily: outreach on the website and upcoming community-based workshops.
”Show Me Love is not just me, at all,” Lynn says, adding that outreach will likely include local churches, too. ”There’s an advisory committee that’s been behind it from the beginning. And we decided from the beginning that we wanted a positive, proactive campaign about how fabulous our relationships can be and deserve to be.”
To get involved with Show Me Love DC, or for more information, call Lynn 202-280-6393, or visit showmelovedc.org.
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