1000 Grandmother Campaign – The Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance

As the New Year approaches, The Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance is reving up the 1000 Grandmother campaign for 2010 !!!  The focus of this group is towards the prevention of domestic and sexual violence, especially when the violence is directed toward children.   In 2010 their goal is to support legislation that seeks an increase of the marriage license fee from $30 to $45 to provide $600,000 in funding for children and youth services related to witnessing or experiencing sexual or domestic violence.  We need as many voices as possible to speak out about this very important step in providing help for children of abuse.

If you are in Virginia, please contact your legislators to support this bill and  plan to attend Legislative Advocacy  Day (LAD) on January 27, 2010.  You can register for LAD online at www.vsdvalliance.org and click on “Special Events” on the left menu.

For talking points and for more information, contact Stacy Ruble at sruble@vsdvalliance.org or Kristine Hall at khall@vsdvalliance.org or call 804-377-0335.

You can also access information on our website www.vsdvalliance.org , click on the top menu “Take Action,” click on the left pop up menu “Public Policy “ and scroll down to “2010 Public Policy Priorities.”

In the “other exciting news” department, the Action Alliance, with the assistance of the 1000 Grandmothers members, will be creating a cause page on Facebook for the 1000 Grandmothers Campaign.  We are very excited about this and you can help in these initial stages by sending some updated photos of you and your grandchildren. We want to make the Facebook page as engaging as possible.  If you will let us post your photos on FB, we will need you to sign a permission granted slip.

The second way that you can help is to sign up to be a monitor of our FB page.  In order for a cause to make a difference, the FB page needs to be interactive and exciting, which means constant updating.  We can make this happen if at least five people sign up to check the page on a regular basis and then no one person will be burdened with daily updating.

If you are interested in this, please let me know and we can fill you in with the details.  We, staff at the Action Alliance, will provide a list of possible topics and ideas for the monitors to pursue.

Another exciting venture that we will begin in 2010 is having available for sale, a 1000 Grandmother license plate!  There are many steps that need to happen before this is possible and our first step is to form a sub committee to do the research on how to have a 1000 Grandmother license plate as a choice for Virginia residents. The purchasing and renewing of this license plate will be a source of income for the Action Alliance, funds that can be used to assist us with our prevention work. Please contact me, if you are interested in joining the sub committee.

To recap, you can get involved with any of the following:     -  Sending a new picture of you and your grandchildren (preferrably electronic)   -  Contacting your legislator   -  Attending Legislative Advocacy Day   -  Monitoring Facebook page   -  Joing the 1000 Grandmother License Plate Sub Committee

Best in the New Year, chris