San Miguel Resource Center

Programs: San miguel resource center's structure is based on the following five program areas: client services, prevention education, cultural outreach, volunteer training, and west end rural outreach. Our client services program provides all of our basic non-residential intervention services, such as: emergency safe-housing which is available for up to three nights and is donated by a local lodging company, crisis intervention, personal advocacy, civil legal advocacy, criminal legal advocacy, short term counseling, three 24-hour help lines, emergency financial assistance, and court accompaniment to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in our service region. The overall numbers served in our client services program have steadily grown over the last few years, reflecting the growth in population in our service area and our success in outreach. In 2014, we served 318 unduplicated victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. Our prevention education program provides over 400 violence prevention presentations annually in the three school districts in our service region, including teen dating violence prevention, bullying prevention, and pre-school effective communication skill-building. We use evidence-based curriculum such as "second step" to impart prevention education information to our local youth. These prevention programs serve over 1,300 students each year. Our prevention education program provided 410 evidence based violence prevention presentations in the 2013-14 school year. Our cultural outreach program provides outreach and support to the hispanic community with all of our basic client services, as well as innovative programming such as "mujeres hispanas", our monthly education and empowerment group. Our outreach to underserved populations continues to set a standard in the region, with assistance to 78 hispanic clients in 2014, notable in a population of 7,678 with 722 (9. 5%) hispanic residents. We have assisted 11 immigrants with the time consuming process of receiving a u visa, 5 of them within the past year, and are currently advising 8 others, with 2 actively working towards obtaining that goal. The acquisition of a u visa through the vawa program is a pathway to residency. The volunteer training program provides three volunteer advocate training programs each year, as well as monthly advocate meetings. We currently have 98 trained volunteers, with 86 of them considered active. This highly successful program educates our community about victim issues, involves the community in social change activities such as the equal pay bake sale, and creates a pool of trained volunteer advocates to staff our 24 hour helpline. Finally, the rural outreach program was developed to meet the needs of clients living in the isolated west end of our service area. In 2013, we served 59 clients from this area, in 2014 that number increased to 69 west end clients. We now have two satellite offices in the west end. One is located in norwood and is staffed one day a week and the other is in nucla and is staffed two days a week.