DELTA Meeting

Spent this afternoon with the Statewide Steering Committee of DELTA, a non-profit that works to prevent intimate partner violence. Given Alaska's position as the state with the highest rate of domestic violence, this is a critical project. See, for example, Amnesty International's Report: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA. We've got a lot of high power talent on the committee, with lots of experience dealing with the issue. Most funding goes to intervention - working with the abused and the abusers after the fact. The emphasis is on prev
ention - focusing on those conditions that contribute to violence in the community and society as a whole so that structural changes can be designed and implemented. We are following a set of steps established by the Center for Disease Control and have been trying to gather data documenting various aspects of the situation in Alaska. We're also mapping people and agenices that deal with intimate partner violence or otherwise affect the lives of the abused and abusers.