Finding Our Voices funding helps hundreds escape abuse and rebuild lives
CAMDEN – Finding Our Voices, the grassroots, survivor-led Maine nonprofit supporting domestic violence victims, announced that more than $275,000 has been paid to empower Maine women survivors to freedom and safety, while helping to rebuild their lives. This funding from the group’s Get Out Stay Out Fund provides critical items to escape dangerous intimate partners.
The Get Out Stay Out Fund was seeded in 2021 – the same year the nonprofit was established – with a $50,000 grant from Doris Buffet’s Sunshine Lady Foundation. Disbursements have doubled every year with the expansion of the nonprofit’s network of referral partners. Support for the work continues to grow: a recently received $5,000 matching grant from Camden National Bank will offset the huge spike in domestic abuse — and need for funds to get safe–that goes hand-in-hand with the holidays.
According to Patrisha McLean, founder and CEO of Finding Our Voices, “Because of our generous donors, in just the first nine months of 2024 we were able to distribute $108,000 to over 800 Maine women and children.”
McLean said, “Financial assistance through our Get Out Stay Out Fund has forestalled eviction from apartments and repossession of cars. Our payments of overdue storage unit fees allow many women to keep prized possessions including photos of their children and official documents.”
McLean added that the funding goes to specific individual needs depending on the circumstances: “Our money has replaced house and car windows as well as eyeglasses smashed by exes. A new front door was delivered and installed to replace one broken by a woman’s ex just as he was being released early from prison for his violence assault against her. We also fund car repairs allowing women to flee when the violent ex is being released on bail and also to keep their jobs.”
What victims have to say
“He isolated me from everyone to the point I have no one to even ask to borrow a dollar,” wrote a woman in her application for Get Out Stay Out funding. “He did it slowly, not liking this person then the next and kept going until everyone was gone. I wasn’t allowed to work or have any money of my own. He needed to control every minute of my day. I was told when to wake up, when to go to sleep…when to shower … how long I was to be in stores …a nd the consequences were bad if I didn’t obey. He messed with my head so bad. In order to get away, I walked away with the clothes on my back.”
“Starting over with nothing at my age isn’t going to be easy but I know it was the only option I had. Ten years was too long as it was and I didn’t want my daughter to think it is ok for a man to do that to her.”
How the funds are distributed
More than one third of the funds went to shelter, including short-term emergency motel stays and apartment security deposits. The second most-funded category was car expenses including repairs, registration and insurance, money toward the purchase of used cars, and gas cards. Other categories of funding where isolation and financial abuse by the intimate partner has created a desperate situation include legal fees, home security devices, overdue utility bills, storage units, and gift cards for food and clothing. Money is provided to permit pets to accompany the family to safe shelter, or board until the family is in their new place.
Statewide referral partners for this fund as well as the nonprofit’s other programs for women domestic abuse victims include District Attorney’s offices, police and sheriff departments, homeless shelters, DHHS and CPS caseworkers, Community Action programs, New Hope Midcoast DV agency, mental health and substance abuse counselors.
Other support provided by Finding Our Voices
Beyond financial assistance for Maine women domestic abuse victims, the nonprofit runs Finding Our Smiles, with 30 dentists and three dental labs providing free, dignified, and gold-standard dental treatment, as well as weekend healing retreats and weekly peer-to-peer online support groups.
McLean said that packages to domestic abuse survivors are sent out every day from the group’s home office in Camden, including personally-inscribed and handmade gifts. “This kindness, compassion and support,” wrote one recipient, “reminds me (and I definitely needed this reminder) that I am doing something important for myself and my children, and that I am not alone.”
The nonprofit has a separate Children’s Fund that provides comfort and joy to children traumatized by domestic abuse, including with music and swim lessons, summer camp, back-to-school clothes, and holiday gifts.
Finding Our Voices receives no government funding, and gets about a third of Get Out Stay Out money from creative community fundraisers. This July, the “Into the Light!” Foodie Festival with 60 Midcoast eateries donating proceeds from yellow food and drink menu items brought in $28,000: Another $20,000 came in from the actor Gabriel Byrne hosting a screening of his movie “The Usual Suspects” followed by a live Q&A. And $10,000 was collected from a yard sale, pizza party, and art sale from FOV survivor Christine Buckley and co-workers, family, and friends.
Finding Our Voices also carries out ground-breaking and survivor-powered public education campaigns. Thousands of posters featuring the photo portraits of 45 Maine survivors aged 18 to 83 — including Gov. Janet T. Mills — paper downtown business windows and public bathrooms.
Finding Our Voices began as a multimedia exhibit of McLean’s photo portraits and audio recordings of survivors of domestic abuse, launching at the Camden Public Library on Valentine’s Day 2019. The exhibit traveled around the state including to the Holocaust and Human Rights Center before COVID turned it into a poster campaign. The nonprofit was then formed in 2021. McLean started her journey of becoming a women’s rights leader with the 2016 domestic violence arrest of her then-husband of 29 years, Don McLean. For more information about Finding Our Voices including how to get help, volunteer and donate, visit https://findingourvoices.net.
