Our Mission:

Our mission is to support and empower survivors as they rebuild their lives and navigate their healing journeys. We aim to enhance community understanding and responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking. We achieve this through agency collaboration, advocacy, outreach, prevention, education, support groups, and emergency services. Together, we work to create a safer, more informed community.

Our Vision:

Shelter from the Storm’s vision is to support a community driven collaboration, promoting safety and empowerment for everyone to be free from violence and the fear of violence.

Our Values

We believe you. It is not our job to question your experience but to believe survivors of violence and support them through the tough times that survivors face.

Believe Survivors

Before we do anything else, we want to make sure folks we serve are safe. It is our first priority and duty to the survivors we serve. Safety first, everything else will follow after.

Safety First

Inclusivity

We believe in fostering a culture of belonging, making people feel respected and valued for who they are. We want folks we work with to feel a level of supportive energy and commitment from us so they can do the work of healing and growing. We want to empower people and respect them, while appreciating what makes them different whether that is their age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education or national origin.

Survivor Led/

We are committed to letting survivors tell us what they need to succeed. We provide multiple options for success and sustainability and we encourage survivors to empower themselves by leading us in the services they feel are right for them.

Empowerment

Part of the important work we do is making sure that our community is informed and understands what work we do, and why it is important. We provide training for community members, our volunteers, and our community partners to ensure that education in our community is ongoing and relevant. Domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and human trafficking affects our entire community, and without education and awareness around this, we cannot make a true difference.

Awareness

Education

We plan ahead to provide awareness events to the community through tabling events at local festivals and gatherings, and through advertising. In April we bring awareness to Sexual Assault through Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), we will work with community partners in a walk and signs and flags. In October we bring awareness to Domestic Violence through Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM), where we also work with the community to provide family friendly events, and remember survivors with a candlelight vigil, and placing purple ribbons in town.

It is imperative that we create an organization that is sustainable in order to provide the absolute best services to survivors in our community. Without a continuity of service and knowledge, we can’t create best outcomes for survivors. We do this through thoughtful fundraising in the community and through grant work. While simultaneously providing a trauma informed work place for our advocates, so that they can have career development while in their position and feel supported in our important work.

Sustainability

Growth

We commit to growth for the organization that translates to providing the best and most up to date services for our clients. Growth is essential in order to ensure that our advocates feel best equipped to serve our community, and growth of the organization shows our community that we are committed to providing these essential services for many years to come.

Collaboration

It is absolutely vital and essential that we network and collaborate with community partners so that we are able to provide our survivors with the best possible outcomes and services. Collaboration allows us to tighten up weak spots in our community safety nets and ensures that the voices of our survivors are heard in the conversations that are being had by our community leadership circles.

The most important work we can do as an organization is to prevent violence before it happens. We are committed to this work and provide information to the community in thoughtful and specific ways such as healthy relationships information, collaborations with community partners on their projects, and outreach to our educational systems and public safety systems on how we can assist their prevention work.

Prevention

Everyone deserves a life free from violence and the fear of violence.

Shelter from the Storm’s 2023-2024 Strategic Plan

 Goal 1: Promote Physical, Social & Emotional Safety for Survivors of Dating/Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking.

★      Strengthen high-quality, trauma-informed residential services for survivors and their families.

★      Work towards strong SART response that is trauma informed and survivor centered.

★      Engage local business owners to raise awareness of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, and how they can assist us in our goal to support further education in the community and becoming advocates of a violence free community.

★      Creating a culture of inclusivity within Shelter from the Storm’s organization in order to bring that culture to our community through our services.

 Goal 2: Build Our Community

★      Building our supporter and volunteer network while becoming more connected with the community in Union County through collaboration with it,s larger institutions.

★      Enhance our brand through community outreach and thoughtful organizational evaluation.

Goal 3: Invest in Our Organizational Structure

★      Development of intentional Policies and Procedures that enhance our ability to serve our community inclusivley and equitably.

★      Invest in building a culture of learning, innovation, and inclusion.

★      Invest in the organizational infrastructure and systems.

★      Strategic Board of Directors development.

★      Explore opportunities to launch new programs and finding creative ways to develop and retain talented advocates.

★      Strengthen SFS's financial position through strategic fundraising and foundational program supporters.

 

Are you passionate about our mission?

Become a part of the team! There are so many ways to support the mission of Shelter from the Storm - be on our board, or part of the staff, volunteer your time and work one on one with survivors, or even just a sustaining donation can mean so much! Reach and let us know how you would like to support our mission and serve survivors in Union County.