PCADV’s Partnership With Allstate Helps Domestic Violence Victims Find Safety & Build New Lives

Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s (PCADV) mission is to eliminate personal and institutional violence against women through programs providing support and safety to battered women, direct services, public information and education, systems advocacy and social change activities.

Violence against women and girls is a global human rights issue, impacting one out of every three women and devastating families and communities. In the U.S., every hour, nearly 145 women are assaulted by a partner, and each day an average of three women die as a result.

In 2011, in effort to offer more comprehensive support and assistance to its 60 domestic violence member programs, and to better enable survivors to overcome immediate economic barriers and secure long-term financial independence and safety, PCADV created the Economic Justice and Empowerment Initiative, Investing in Survivors’ Financial Independence. To support and sustain this initiative, PCADV established a partnership with the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) and applied for an Allstate Foundation Moving Ahead Financial Empowerment Grant in 2012.

Because domestic violence has long been considered a taboo subject, many women suffer in silence, and that is where The Allstate Foundation has found its role: inspiring and empowering survivors and delivering hope where there was none to end the cycle of abuse.

Inspired by independent research indicating that access to financial resources is the number one predictor of whether a woman will break free and stay free, The Allstate Foundation has put financial empowerment at the center of its approach to empowering women to achieve the financial self-sufficiency they need to get free and stay free from abuse.