Domestic violence/intimate partner violence (DV/IPV) knows no boundaries. It occurs in every culture, country, and age group. It affects people from all socioeconomic, educational, and religious backgrounds, and it is experienced across sexual identities and gender expressions. Children are also affected even if they are not abused or do not witness abuse directly. 

 Recognizing that our commitment to preventing intimate partner violence will always fall short unless we address the factors that underpin violence, Women’s Support Services adopted a new mission in 2020:

 We create social change to end interpersonal, relationship violence by challenging attitudes and beliefs about power, control, and gender norms and by advocating for victims and survivors.

 While retaining our commitment to supporting victims of DV/IPV, this mission recognizes the importance of broader community engagement in fostering the dialogue necessary to support social change.

Director of Client Services, Virginia Gold, takes on the tie-dye challenge during the Salisbury Fall Fest.

Survivor Desirée McKay-Rogers enlightens participants at a WSS Annual Community Vigil.

It also recognizes the critical role of prevention programming for students of all ages.

Virginia Gold, Director of Client Services, running a training workshop for area faculty.

 Women’s Support Services follows three programmatic strategies:

•  Education: We engage youth and adults in learning about attitudes and beliefs about gender norms and the exercise of power and control, how this influences relational choices, and how unhealthy relationship choices contribute to interpersonal, relationship violence;
• Advocacy: We challenge widely accepted but damaging gender norms and societal role expectations within organizations and our communities;
• Support: We coordinate responses to address immediate and long-lasting effects of interpersonal, relationship violence.

 
For more information, please visit www.wssdv.org. 

Volunteers support WSS in so many ways – client support, court advocacy, elementary school programming…we couldn’t do it without them!

Volunteers show their commitment and their mettle at the WSS Annual Fundraiser, Trade Secrets.