The Network - Advocating Against Domestic Violence

To every voice that’s been silenced, every story still unfolding, and every person living their truth: this month is for you. Happy Pride 🌈

🌈 Celebrate Pride, build community, and access support, all in one place! Join The Network and partners this Sunday, June 7th, from 1–5 PM for a Pride Month celebration and GBV resource fair! We hope to see you there!

What an incredible two days! Thank you everyone who joined us for our second in-person conference. We hope you found the program as inspiring as we did. It was amazing to see so many of our community members come together to reclaim our love. 💚

We extend our sincere appreciation to the sponsors of this year’s Reclaiming Our Love
Conference.

Our Champion Sponsor, The Allstate Foundation, has been a long-standing and invaluable partner to The Network. They are committed to advancing youth empowerment, breaking cycles of relationship abuse, and strengthening nonprofit leadership.

Thank you for your commitment to our mission!

HB 4990 would amend the Preventing Sexual Violence in Higher Education Act to add key updates and increased protections for survivors of gender-based violence. The bill has four areas of focus:
- Addressing protections against student-on-student sexual harassment, including protections against digital sexual harassment;
- Ensuring survivors are allowed both a support person and a complaint advisor during complaint proceedings;
- Requiring an update to existing policies to strengthen anti-retaliation protections and clarify the availability of supportive and protective measures for survivors;
- Creating an enforcement mechanism so that institutions are complying with their policies and taking student survivor reports of GBV seriously.

Student survivors should not have to choose between their safety and their education. Please send an email to your legislators today. They only have a few days to vote on the measure! https://the-network.quorum.us/campaign/153340/

The Community Violence & Domestic Violence Intersections panel discussion at the Reclaiming Our Love conference next week has been moved to 11:00 am on Friday, May 29th! With opening remarks and panel facilitation by Kris Rose and this powerful group of panelists, you won't want to miss this session on the intersections of CV and DV.

The networking hour will now take place at 1:30 pm on Friday.

Please note that tickets are sold out for the conference. If you would like to be added to the wait list, please email [email protected].

Join us on Thursday, May 21 at 4:30 pm for a Plant and Paint event hosted by The Network's community engagement team! Strengthen your sense of community, learn more about GBV and resources available, and walk away with your own painted pot and plant. We hope to see you there!

Tickets for the Reclaiming Our Love conference are officially sold out! We are so excited to see the interest and excitement from our community about this event and we look forward to seeing you next week!

If you would like to be added to the waiting list for the conference, please email [email protected].

Join us for the relaunch of our Program Directors and Senior Management Peer Support Group! Facilitated by an external expert, this peer support group creates community for senior directors or other upper management staff from gender-based violence programs to engage in dialogue surrounding relevant topics to their roles.

Register here to join: https://tinyurl.com/3uwma45v

Thank you to everyone who joined us at The Hideout last night to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Karina's Law! We are especially grateful to guest speaker Manny Alvarez; our moderator, Sophie Sherry; and our panelists State Senator Celina Villanueva, Lindsay Miller of Legal Action Chicago, Geetu Naik of the Cook County Sheriffs Department, and Chicago Police Sgt. Patrick Roth.

The past year has been critical for implementation of Karina's Law, and we can't wait to put the full force of our advocacy efforts behind the Karina's Law Trailer Bill SB3329. Stay tuned for more information on how you can lend your voice to support the bill!