Thank you again for your previous support for the International Safe Shelter Foundation (ISSF).

We are committed to continuing to live out our mission to “empower Latin American shelters that serve abused women and children in their mission to end domestic violence by linking them with United States based resources”.

With your support, we were able to help fund a holiday celebration at the Centro de Protección Mujer a Mujer in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, shortly after our campaign in December 2020. We also launched a new project with the shelter to help women transition to life outside the shelter. The Centro de Protección Mujer a Mujer shelter was given a grant from ISSF to help support women transitioning out of the shelter with expenses such as their first month of rent, as well as providing a grill and gas tank for preparing meals.

The team at ISSF is excited to help empower these survivors to create a violence-free life. Often, the women that arrive in the shelter need to restart their life once they leave the shelter, including searching for new housing, employment, finishing school, accessing new clothes for job interviews, and furniture for their home. The women are referred from public and private sectors to this shelter, but the shelter is left with the fiscal responsibility of assisting families in their new lives. Unfortunately, these women often return to their aggressors after leaving the shelter because they are not able to sustain the expense of maintaining a household. The women can access employment, but most jobs leave them a week behind in income, since they do not receive the first paycheck until two weeks after starting a job, and they do not have transitional resources.

This year, our 16 Days of Activism Campaign will focus on continued support for the Centro de Protección Mujer a Mujer in funding their Transitional Support Project. So far, ISSF has donated $1,000 to this project. Our hope is that after our Campaign, we will be able to donate the remaining $500 next Spring. We will highlight the Campaign on our website, Facebook and LinkedIn pages. We will also feature interview vignettes with the director of the Centro de Protección Mujer a Mujer, Angela Fierro Sandoval, where she will share her thoughts about the project launch and her work in supporting victims of domestic violence. 

You can get involved in supporting our campaign by:

1. Sharing about the 16 Days of Activism Campaign, educating others about domestic violence and how deeply gender-based violence affects those around us. You can share, retweet, or repost our posts.
2. We are actively recruiting for new board members to support our team. We have three officer positions open: Community Development Officer, Bilingual Cultural Liaison, and Social Media Officer. We also accept associate members who support our team as needed, such as for logistics and fundraising.
3. We are always looking for new ways to support domestic violence victims in Latin America. If you know of a shelter or organization that we can explore a partnership with, please contact us at info@issf-us.org
4. You can contribute financially to our cause and help us reach our fundraising goal.

Thank you for supporting the International Safe Shelter Foundation. None of this would have been possible without you. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and sharing with you about this important work!

Sincerely,

Patricia Gross, President

International Safe Shelter Foundation

www.issf-us.org