Kan-Win

Goal #1: asian american victims of domestic and/or sexual violence will receive crisis intervention and case management in order to successfully escape violence. During the grant period, Kan-Win provided multilingual crisis counseling and related assistance through the 24-hour hotline to at least 357 callers a year. As for direct services, Kan-Win worked with 325 adult and child survivors via comprehensive case management services. Of them, 140 clients received legal advocacy services and crisis intervention assistance. Goal #2: adult and child victims will gain understanding of the dynamics of violence, rights and options, and progress toward healing through education and counseling in their native language. Expanded outreach to vietnamese elders through partnership with vietnamese association of Illinois (vai), conducting a series of 3 listening sessions to understand attitudes and experiences of gender-based violence in their communities. Goal #3: survivors will gain economic empowerment tools to help them make a permanent break from violence by building self-sufficiency and economic stability. (on-going) Kan-Win expanded its housing program during the grant period, assisting 32 families via the transitional housing program. They received various services, including finding and securing affordable housing, budget planning for housing expenses, provision of transitional housing support for security deposit, first month rent and/or utilities, etc. The prolonged pandemic had further caused financial stress for low-income clients. Frequently closing daycare centers and schools affected clients who were working for small businesses. The current high inflation in the u.s. had a severe impact on them as well, because inflation is most reflected in elevated food, housing, and gas prices. Our advocates worked with community partners to raise funds for direct cash assistance for survivors. Immigrant community groups such as joyful coop, local churches and temples provided support that could directly benefit our clients. Goal #4: leadership programming will empower survivors and community members to engage in anti- violence movement. (ongoing except as indicated below) we implemented the peer advocate leadership program for adults and youth in the community. In the fall of 2022, peer-to-peer education on various gender-based violence issues was facilitated with mongolian, korean, and faith-based community members with a total of 52 participating members. Our youth peer advocate leadership (ypal) program has grown rapidly over the pandemic and this year's cohort was the biggest and most diverse yet. There were 23 participants with an age range from rising freshman in high school to rising freshman in college. Participants identified as vietnamese, indian, korean, mongolian, and ukrainian.goal #5: conduct education and outreach to spread awareness of victim services and to dispel victim- blaming myths and perceptions within the community. We conducted 410 outreach events and presentations on domestic and sexual violence issues to asian american children, teens, seniors, church-goers, and clergy. We reached 6,997 participants directly and even more community members by ethnic media outreach we also worked with partner organizations to provide the illinois-mandated sexual harassment training for employees, including hana center and hanul family alliance. For the rest of december, we will be conducting this training for alliance for filipinos for immigrant rights and empowerment (afire), indo-american center and asian americans advancing justice chicago. We also connected with local churches about this training opportunity. And during the grant period, we provided domestic violence education to over 120 cosmetologists in immigrant communities. Kan-Win conducted hotline response training for Kan-Win crisis line volunteers. This hotline training is designed for hotline volunteers who completed the il certified 40-hour domestic violence program and prepares them to be confident in answering crisis lines which covers 24/7 beyond business hours. The crisis line volunteers will be prepared with crisis intervention skills, knowledge, and safety plans to meet various situations. Through recruiting more hotline volunteers, Kan-Win's 24/7 crisis line will be more reliable for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors to seek help from.