DataCenter is collaborating with Creative Interventions and Generation Five on a National Story Collecting Project to collect stories from people who have participated in a successful community-based intervention to interpersonal violence including domestic violence, sexual abuse and child abuse. Success is defined as an intervention that ended or reduced violence or was otherwise satisfying to the survivor of abuse, and whose intervention was not primarily dependent on the police or other public system.

Based in Oakland, CA, Creative Interventions helps communities end and prevent family, intimate partner and other forms of interpersonal violence through community accountability strategies. Generation Five is a national organization working to end child sexual abuse through community organizing. Initiated and led by Creative Interventions, the National Story Collecting project is part of Generation Five’s Transformative Justice project, working to evolve community-based alternatives to end violence by supporting community and social transformation of conditions that collude in and perpetuate violence.

The goals of this community-based research include documenting and sharing stories from many diverse cultures and situations of abuse, learning from these stories about what can make these interventions successful, and increasing community capacity to end violence using resources within social and community networks. DC has provided support in creating the methodology and tools for the project, and will also help in compiling and analyzing data.

To participate in the National Story Collecting Project as a story teller or story collector or to get more information, contact Creative Interventions at stories@creative-interventions.org or tel: 510.452.8595. For more information about the project, see www.creative-interventions.org.