Carmen's List Project -galvanizing women's volunteer energy: An internet based social network approach to intimate partner violence advocacy

Moderated list serve technology provides new tools to expand advocacy for survivors of intimate partner violence in 2 distinct ways. First, by creating accessible flexible resource lists which recurrently update all available community advocacy resources (medical, social service, criminal justice etc), include evaluation by advocate and survivor after service utilization and can be tailored to the particular needs of racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, differently -abled, -aged, -resourced – populations; and second, by providing a method for engaging volunteer advocates to provide finite blocks of service in an organized fashion. Like other social networking efforts, capacity can begin modestly, and expand with increasing resources. CARMEN'S LIST PROJECT is a hospital-based program that models the possibilities of this approach using programs (a) similar to those designed for volunteer hospice coverage and (b) like those that identify and evaluate commercial (plumbing, electrical) services. After initial organization (steering committee formation, list serve creation, initial data entry, location of advocacy training material; identification of list serve moderators) CLP has developed a 5 step structured program: screening potential volunteers (utilizing reproducible criteria); training volunteers for both acute crisis intervention and follow-up (using on-line resources and measurable competencies); engaging volunteers in 3 hour biweekly “on-call periods” (with back-up volunteer resources ); providing mutual help debriefing sessions after utilization of advocacy; and implementing outreach to potentially affected survivors. CLP allows many and different volunteers to enter a community of activism, in a structured, minimally burdensome fashion, to increase safety and improve the lives of women at risk of violence.