The Reboot (December 2020)
December 1, 2020
Dear CPAF Family,
Welcome to the reboot of the CPAF newsletter, which is also serving as the kickoff to the year-end fundraising campaign this Giving Tuesday! Our last newsletter was in May 2020, and we needed to take a short break during the pandemic—we hope you understand. We’ve missed you, and we heard from some of you that you missed our newsletter! We are excited to bring back the newsletter and let you know how much your support has meant to CPAF this year.
Whether you volunteered on the 24-hour crisis hotline, sewed masks, donated PPE to keep clients and staff safe, mentored CPAF youth virtually, recorded educational or craft activity videos for children in CPAF shelters, sponsored our annual benefit or had a virtual birthday fundraiser for CPAF, you have shown up to end gender-based violence. Thank you for your generosity and commitment!
Our crisis hotline advocates are handling calls that are more intense now. Our outreach and prevention programs have gone virtual. Shelter residents, many of them working essential jobs, need extra support juggling the schooling of their children while also managing the stress of pandemic risk and so many other responsibilities. Secondary trauma, along with needing to manage our own personal and work responsibilities during the pandemic, has taken a toll. Everyone has had to modify their services, and we are continuing to work with our friends in the community to figure out how to collaborate in serving our shared community.
We are acknowledging these difficulties, and at the same time, have done our best to be resilient for one another, the clients, and our communities. Healthy staff make for healthy organizations, and we want to make sure that staff are taken care of so they can do this difficult work. Your support helps make that possible.
Here are some of the things CPAF has done:
Celebrated CPAF staff as Champions of Change! We couldn’t do our gala in person this year, so we had a virtual fundraising campaign instead. And for the first time ever, CPAF honored its staff as Champions of Change. The virtual staff appreciation event featured a special CPAF song and ukulele performance by CPAF Volunteer Coordinator Heidi Lee, a video, lots of shout-outs to staff, and games. What are some ways you have been appreciated or are appreciating others?
Created a Breakfast Club! Every week, members of CPAF staff gather virtually to chat, play games, and sometimes even perform karaoke. It has been a place for reflection, healing, connection, and a bit of silliness and fun—things that we all need right now. What can you do to make a space with your work family or friends to process, reflect, and have fun?
Convened a Racial Justice Committee (RJC)! In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and ongoing violence against Black people, CPAF staff needed a space to reflect, and wanted to take concrete actions to make CPAF an anti-racist organization. RJC grew organically out of the conversations that were happening in Breakfast Club. It was formed so staff could take the lead in this process, with the support of management and the Board of Directors. RJC has conducted a staff survey to assess learning and training needs. RJC is also working on coordinating an organizational audit process with external consultants to put equity at the center of CPAF policies, programs, and practices. We’ve seen a lot of changes already due to RJC’s efforts, and look forward to keeping you updated on RJC’s activities in the future. What steps have you taken to be anti-racist?
On Giving Tuesday, please consider making a donation of any amount to CPAF. When you donate to CPAF, you are helping to support and strengthen our staff and organization. This support in turns makes it possible for us to ensure that API and other DV survivors have access to emergency and transitional shelter, multilingual counseling, and prevention education programs. You can make a one-time donation or recurring donation here.
If you want to know more about how you can be part of the CPAF community in our efforts to end-gender based violence, here are some suggestions:
Learn from the latest research about the risk and strengthening factors in Asian American communities in a study by A3PCON and Blue Shield of California Foundation, with support from CPAF. You can check it out here.
Follow CPAF on social media (and help us reach 900 followers!)
Share CPAF’s confidential, 24-hour hotline number (1-800-339-3940) with those who need crisis intervention
Sign-up to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox
Finally, please take our survey and give us feedback on our newsletter
With love and gratitude,
Debra Suh
Executive Director