Our statewide sexual and domestic violence agency: The Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance (VSDVAA) with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) implemented a project on domestic violence prevention back in 2003.  This program continues and will continue past 2009.  This project, the Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances (DELTA) major role was to develop the Virginia Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Plan.  The overall goal was to create evidenced-based strategies that prevent first-time perpetration of intimate partner violence.  Goals were developed for the next 8 – 10 years with achievement by 2014.

Goal 1:  Increase the number and diversity of communities in Virginia that engage in effective programs to promote healthy relationships. This goal is to increase funding to $500,000 a year, located 50% of the projects in historically oppressed communities and increase the capacity of local communities to engage in the promotion of healthy relationships.

Goal 2: Increase the VSDVAA members commitment to achieving economic equality in Virginia. This goal will achieve the salaries of all staff to a living wage with family leave and health care benefits for partners and dependents, increase member agencies to be able to provide the same, and increase organizational commitment to address racism by 25 percent.

Goal 3:  Increase the capacity of young adults to effectively identify and respond to behaviors that may be precursors to IPV. 75% of students surveyed on 3 diverse college campuses and 75% of high school students, after the Red Flag Campaign, will demonstrate that they are more likely to intervene in behaviors that are potential precursors to intimate partner violence.

Goal 4: Increase the resources available to professionals who serve youth for building healthy relationship skills and positive racial identify for African-American youth in pre-K through elementary school. This goal is do develop a partnership with key leaders from the African-American community and develop five new tools for modeling healthy relationships; promoting media literacy related to gender, race, and violence; teaching skills for engaging in healthy relationships; providing lessons that promote positive racial identity for pre-K through elementary-school-aged African-American children.

Goal 5: Increase our understanding of perpetration of intimate partner violence. This goal is to partner with Va. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and law enforcement leaders to structure a set of qualitative data, specific to perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence taht could be consistently collected in IPV homicide investigation and through surveillance.

This report has been originally published by the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance.  You can request a full report by emailing info@vsdvalliance.org