Alliance for HOPE International

Alliance for HOPE International is one of the leading systems and social change organizations in the country focused on creating innovative, collaborative, trauma-informed approaches to meeting the needs of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and their children.  Alliance for HOPE International and its allied Centers serve more than 150,000 survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and their children each year in the United States. The Alliance supports multi-agency Centers in more than ten countries and trains more than 10,000 multi-disciplinary professionals every year.

The mission of Alliance for HOPE International is to create pathways to hope for women, children, and men who are victims of domestic violence and related sexual assault through collaborative, integrated multi-disciplinary centers, teams, and initiatives to break the generational cycle of violence and abuse in families across the United States and around the world.

Alliance for HOPE International aims to create a future where all the needs of victims are met, children are protected, batterers are held accountable, violence fades, economic justice increases, families heal and thrive, Hope is realized and we ALL work together.

In each program, we also have specific goals that align with our overarching mission. Family Justice Centers provide wraparound services for adult and child survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Camp HOPE America focuses on developing and supporting year-round camping and mentoring programs for youth impacted by domestic violence and child abuse. DomesticShelters.org provides online resources for over a million survivors of domestic violence each year. The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention focuses on the most lethal cases of domestic and sexual violence -- those involving strangulation and suffocation. Our VOICES Survivor Advocacy Network focuses on elevating the voices of survivors who want to advocate for resources and support for other survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Each program overlaps and connects with the other. Family Justice Centers specialized in enhancing both victim safety and offender accountability. The highest risk victims in Family Justice Centers are those who have been strangled or suffocated. Children are profoundly impacted by witnessing domestic violence in their homes and often also experience overlapping physical and sexual abuse. Camp HOPE America, our camping and mentoring program focuses on breaking the generational cycle of abuse by helping children and youth find pathways to hope and healing. In all our programs, we measure hope and wellbeing. Higher hope scores in adults and children predicts recovery from trauma. Casey Gwinn, the President of the Alliance published a bestselling book in 2018 with Dr. Chan Hellman from the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma -- Hope Rising: How the Science of HOPE Can Change Your Life documenting our outcomes.

Alliance for HOPE International helps children and adult survivors of domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual abuse find pathways to hope and healing. All of our programs focus on increasing Hope in the lives of children and adults and we can prove it. Hope is a science and it is measurable. Sadly, many social service programs do not measure their results and cannot prove to donors the direct impact of their work. Through a partnership with the University of Oklahoma's Center of Applied Research on Nonprofit Organizations, one of the leading Hope Research Centers in the country, Alliance for HOPE International measures Hope, Resiliency, Strength of Character, and a host of other outcomes from our programs and allied Centers across the United States. Why does Hope matter? Why are we so focused on increasing Hope in the lives of those impacted by violence and abuse?

Hope is the single most important predictor of long-term outcomes in the lives of survivors. High hope people navigate their way through trauma better than low hope people. Using the Hope Index, we measure Hope before and after we work with children and adult survivors of violence and abuse. Our latest Hope research, focused on the work of our nationally recognized Camp HOPE America program for children exposed to domestic violence, has found statistically significant increases in Hope scores from our evidence-based curriculum and activities at Camp HOPE programs in Family Justice Centers and community-based domestic violence and child abuse prevention organizations across America.

Alliance for HOPE International is one of the leading systems and social change organizations in the country focused on creating innovative, collaborative, trauma-informed, hope-centered approaches to meeting the needs of survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, elder abuse, and human trafficking. Alliance for HOPE International and its allied Family Justice Centers serve more than 150,000 survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and their children each year in the United States. The Alliance supports Family Justice/Multi-Agency Centers through our Family Justice Center Alliance in 40 states and 25 countries and trains more than 10,000 multi-disciplinary professionals every year. In our work with survivors and strangulation and suffocation assaults in our Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, we focus on direct support for survivors and training for doctors, nurses, police officers, prosecutors, advocates, and other professionals handling near and non-fatal strangulation cases. We also run the largest camping and mentoring program in the country for children impacted by domestic violence – Camp HOPE America.

The Family Justice Center (FJC) movement, which evolved into the Family Justice Center Alliance - the flagship program at the Alliance, began in San Diego in the mid-1990’s through the vision and work of current Alliance President Casey Gwinn and Alliance CEO Gael Strack who began co-locating police officers, prosecutors, community-based advocates, civil legal service providers, and child trauma therapists in the San Diego City Attorney’s Office. In 2002, their multi-agency model evolved into the nationally recognized San Diego FJC, a coordinated, co-location of 120 professionals from 25 agencies, teamed with 120 volunteers, to create a community of hope and healing for adult and child survivors. Casey Gwinn provided oversight to the Center as the elected City Attorney and Gael Strack served as the first FJC Director in the country in her role as an Assistant City Attorney in San Diego. In 2004, Casey and Gael were asked to provide leadership to President George W. Bush’s $20 million President’s Initiative that launched the next 15 Centers in the country. Today, the Family Justice Center Alliance (FJCA) supports FJCs in 40 states. These Centers provide contextualized and research-driven wrap-around services at no cost to survivors, bringing together government and community-based agencies under one roof so survivors come to one place instead of having to go from agency to agency to receive support. FJCA technical assistance includes providing onsite and virtual guidance to communities who are developing FJCs, supporting operating FJCs and providing ongoing education and training for staff and community members through national webinars, toolkits, our Resource Library, and many other initiatives and projects that focus on hope-centered approaches to service delivery.

All our programs measure outcomes in collaboration with our funders and the University of Oklahoma, our research partner. Progress is measured in impacts in the lives of those we serve through direct services and our policy work is measured in the achievement of goals. Our Camp HOPE America program began in San Diego in 2003 and in 2019 we hosted camping and mentoring programs in 20 states. Our Family Justice Center Alliance program focuses on developing multi-agency Centers across the country to provide wraparound services to victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, elder abuse, and human trafficking. We opened the first Family Justice Center in 2002 in San Diego, CA. Today, we have Centers in 40 states and 20 countries around the world. Our Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention is the largest training program and survivor assistance program in the country for victims of near-fatal strangulation in domestic violence and sexual assault cases. Our specialized work on these life-threatening assaults began in San Diego in 1995. Since 2004, we have successfully advocated for felony statutes on strangulation in more than 45 states and US territories. We train more than 10,000 professionals each year including doctors, nurses, police officers, prosecutors, advocates, paramedics, and other professionals. Our Justice Legal Network provides direct civil legal services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of trauma. This is our newest program but is already being replicated in Family Justice Centers across the United States. Our VOICES Survivors Advocacy Network is made up of courageous survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault who advise our staff and Board and advocate for social, policy, and legislative change. Our VOICES Committee-model has now been replicated in more than ten states. We measure our progress through the success of direct services and the replication of our evidence-based programs. Our team has published ten books in the last ten years on our work and many journal articles and blogposts to document our successes and promote replication.

The Alliance has become the leading social change organization in the country focused on the development of multi-agency, and multi-disciplinary approaches to serving victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, and human trafficking. We are the only organization advocating for bringing together professionals working in each area listed above instead of the siloed approach that is prevalent among these subject areas and the professionals in all the related disciplines.

The Alliance has published the first research in the country on the effectiveness of camping and mentoring in the lives of children exposed to trauma, on the dynamics of near-fatal strangulation assaults, and on the success of Family Justice Centers in the lives of adult survivors of violence and abuse.