In the brief 35 years that the battered women's movement has existed, profound changes have occurred. Presently, 2,000 shelters exist nationwide. Thousands of lives have been saved. Numerous state and national laws have been passed to protect battered women and their children and to uphold their unequivocal right to live in safety.

Yet, our work is far from over. Violence against women continues, and girls are now experiencing more abuse, at a younger age, than ever before. Our movement is continually confronted with new challenges. There has been an upsurge in sexism and violence in the media, which is now readily accessible on the internet. The emergence of street gangs and unprecedented incidences of dating abuse and schoolyard slayings by young boys have now become a part of our lives.

Every day the staff and volunteers of Marin Abused Women's Services (MAWS) reach out and touch the lives of battered women and their children as well as work with men batterers to stop their violence. Through our hotlines, emergency and transitional shelters, support groups, and Men's Program, we provide a range of direct services which help to rebuild lives and bring forth a violence-free tomorrow.

We are committed to overcoming the root causes of domestic violence and abuse to provide safety and justice for all women and girls. We contend that domestic violence, for the most part, is grounded in men's violence against women. While it is true that women sometimes are violent in their relationships with both men and women, the fact is that 95 percent of domestic violence cases are attributable to men.

We believe that men's violence is learned and is therefore not inevitable. To prevent men's violence against women, we are committed to a broad-based movement of social change. Root-level change will affect men's lives by changing how power is associated with gender roles. We aim to free men of the destructive social conditioning which causes harm to themselves as well as to women. A radical uplifting of the role and value of women in our culture is also fundamental to our purpose. Only by raising the status of women can we truly be free from violence.

Social justice movements have taught us that individuals mobilized for change can alter the conditions, values, and norms of a community. We are therefore committed to carrying out community mobilization strategies which can dismantle the embedded social belief systems that jeopardize women's safety and make them vulnerable to violence. This will require broader participation of our communities, to effect a dynamic social change movement which can, over time, lead to greater safety and justice for all.

Moving forward in our mission, we will continue to develop public policies and advocate laws to provide further protection to women and hold men accountable for their violence. We also extend this accountability to people of diverse sexual preferences who engage in violence within their relationships.

During the past 32 years, we have acquired outstanding experience implementing a full continuum of domestic violence services as well as prevention strategies. We believe this experience has provided us with outstanding resources and the leadership capacity to effect broad-based social change. It is our vision that women may live in peace and freedom in a world where they do not encounter oppression because of their gender. We look toward a day when all men and women can co-exist in cooperative ways based on values of safety, equality and respect.

We invite you to participate in the realization of that vision.