Domestic violence is the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States, according to the California Department of Health Services. Immigrants often suffer higher rates of battering because they have less access to services than those born in the US. Believing that no one deserves abuse, the Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse (CORA) made it their mission to end domestic violence and abuse in San Francisco Bay Area through intervention and prevention.
CORA is the only multicultural agency in San Mateo County which provides free and confidential services to victims and survivors of domestic/dating violence and abuse, including child and teen witnesses. Its services include a 24-hour hotline, support groups, legal services, emergency shelter and transitional housing, among others, working in English, Spanish and Tagalog languages. It also has a fully funded Filipino American Outreach Program. About 10% of the clientele of CORA are Filipinos.
CORA’s success and popularity in the US, particularly in the Filipino American community, is credited to 12 dedicated volunteers who call themselves the Filipino American Task Force / Advisory Board. Established in 2001 as a subgroup of CORA’s Multimedia Advisory Group, the Task Force helps CORA’s community education team widen its outreach to the county’s most populous Asian groups.
The Task Force has been actively pursuing a community education program focused on domestic violence education among Filipino Americans. It has provided training workshops and orientation seminars covering topics on abuse, cycle of violence and effects on children to Filipino women in intermarriages. Its members have also served as resource speakers for Filipino Americans at health fairs and community events where communities are engaged to embrace the campaign to end domestic violence. The Task Force’s information and education campaigns resulted in media exposure which paved way to a higher rate of Filipinos accessing CORA’s services, and a parallel increase in the number of Filipino volunteer workers at CORA. Filipino Americans now realize that while domestic abuse and violence happen in Filipino American families, they can be prevented through a collective effort.
To strengthen the capacities of consulate officials and staff who deal with complaints and assistance-to-nationals’ cases, the Task Force initiated the conduct of a domestic violence awareness and sensitivity training for the entire staff of the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco in 2006, a first for any Philippine diplomatic office. The Task Force was also the first to hold a commemoration of the Domestic Violence Awareness Month at the Philippine Consulate which became the launch pad for the first ever-public pledge against domestic violence. It also organized the first public testimony of a Filipino American domestic violence survivor which put the issue of domestic violence in the frontline of the Filipino American community’s consciousness.
With the help of CORA and its Filipino volunteers, the stigma attached to domestic abuse is slowly being shattered. They reflect the understanding that abuse is not only physical, and it takes a community working together to end domestic violence. Indeed, CORA and the Task Force save lives, prevent women and children from becoming victims, and help build healthy homes. One of its beneficiaries claimed that with the help of CORA, she became a new person. She relayed, “I was once a victim, then a survivor. CORA has helped me become a hero.”
In conferring the Kaanib ng Bayan Award to CORA-Filipino American Task Force / Advisory Board, the President recognizes its admirable humanitarian services in promoting the welfare of Filipino Americans, and empowering them to end domestic violence and abuse.
