Liam E. Esposito

IGNITE (formerly ASADV—Advocacy Services for Abused Deaf Victims)

Liam Esposito

Our agency is Deaf-centered, survivor-centered, trauma-informed, gender neutral and strengths-based. We deeply value the time, energy and work that survivors bring to our organization. In our early years, most Deaf survivors came to us for support with domestic violence issues. As a result of ongoing support, advocacy, and counseling provided to these survivors, nearly all of our clients have disclosed experience with child sexual abuse. The crisis in our community is quite evident—the numbers speak for themselves.

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Photo of Sonya Shah, founder of The Ahimsa Collective

The Ahimsa Collective

Sonya Shah

We live in a world where sexual violence, especially violence against women and children of color, is normalized. Their safety is dismissed and their body integrity is not valued. Our culture’s conflation of sex and violence and the systematic disregard of communities of color is often at the root of multi-generational cycles of violence. But it does not have to be this way. Imagine what the world could be like if sexual abuse were no longer normalized

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Black Women’s Blueprint

Sevonna Brown

We envision a world where women and girls of African descent are fully empowered and gender, race and other disparities are erased. We work to place Black women and girls’ lives, as well as their particular struggles, squarely within the context of racial justice and are committed to building movements where gender matters

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Firecracker Foundation

Tashmica Torok

Our society invests backwards. We prefer to invest in children who prove themselves—children who demonstrate adults’ standard of excellence—and refuse to support a group of children who need us the most: child survivors of trauma and abuse. If we want our communities to thrive, we must be willing to invest in children who are suffering and who need healing and support. I believe children are our greatest gifts and the extraordinary bravery of each child survivor deserves to be honored. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, I created the organization that I would have wanted as a child

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Girls for Gender Equity

Gabrielle Radeka

Leadership is defined by the moment. How can you shift the trajectory of the injustice you are witnessing or experiencing? Each and every young person we work with is a leader—in their schools, in communities and in our country. We listen to girls and young women of color. We trust them not only to have a seat at the table, but to be there, making decisions about the policies and systems that directly affect their lives

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IMPACT

Meg Stone

My work is about creating systemic change in schools and organizations that support people with disabilities. For me, this means creating official abuse prevention policies, challenging ableism, and building an organizational culture that welcomes and supports challenging conversations about the messages our actions give children with disabilities about their bodies. If we want change to be real and sustainable, it must nurture the leadership and self-advocacy of people with disabilities and also resonate with the people who are educating and supporting them

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Multicultural Efforts to End Sexual Assault

Kimber Nicoletti-Martinez

There are social forces and systems at work in our country that not only permit but promote a subjugation of the bodies of women and children, especially women and children of color. We see this in the objectification that is part of the patriarchal, white, mainstream culture—a culture that values men over women and children. Preventing child sexual abuse is our highest calling and priority. We cannot end child sexual abuse without dismantling this systemic oppression

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Oregon Abuse Advocates and Survivors in Service (OAASIS)

Klarissa Ling Oh

We believe that we are more powerful to change the realities of child sexual abuse when each of us has deep access to our whole beings, supportive relationships and a sense of belonging to the larger community. Through taking most seriously the insight of those most affected by child sexual abuse, by making mistakes and learning from them, and by believing that we can shift the realities of child sexual abuse, we have worked to nurture an affirming, powerful, thoughtful, authentic and action-oriented culture

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Safe Communities (formerly SafeChurch)

Linda Crockett

Child sexual abuse is fundamentally about power and the abuse of power. But we must also come to terms with the fact that adults not using their power to prevent child sexual abuse—to create the conditions where sexual violence against children is unacceptable—is also an abuse of power. If we are to end child sexual abuse, we, as adults, must shift our culture from one of denial and passivity to embrace our collective responsibility for the well-being of children in our communities

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Ahmad Greene-Hayes

I am a minister, a freedom fighter, and a survivor-activist who has worked to end all forms of violence, especially racial-sexual violence, against Black people. So much of our collective understanding of love is rooted in violence. Our culture conflates abuse and love—so many of us do not know how to love each other or ourselves. We have deep work to do, and I intend to bring my knowledge and experience as a preacher, scholar and community organizer to the forefront of the movement to end child sexual abuse

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