TRANSCRIPT:
Two people appear sitting down. Jim Brune is on the left, a white male wearing a pink collared shirt and a brown vest. Tara Holcomb is on the right, wearing a purple blouse and a black cardigan. DCARA and DeafHope’s logos are in the background.
Tara: “Hello! I’m Tara Holcomb, Empowerment Director at DeafHope.”
Jim: “Hello! I’m Jim Brune, Executive Director at DCARA.”
Tara: “We’re thrilled to announce that DeafHope and DCARA has formed a partnership. The purpose of this? To provide stronger services to Deaf survivors in the Bay Area.”
Jim: “Also, another purpose for this: We are working together as partners to create a safer Deaf community.”
Tara: “As part of our partnership agreement, we developed a Memorandum of Understanding “MOU” which explains what roles DCARA and DeafHope will do. There are three parts. The first part is the kind of services we will provide to Deaf survivors. We at DeafHope will continue to provide crisis-related services such as If something just happened related to domestic violence or sexual violence. If you need a court advocate, hospital advocate, or if you need immediate services, counseling, support or references, DeafHope will be able to provide all that support to survivors.”
Jim: “As for DCARA, once survivors come out of crisis mode and need follow-up services such as long-term housing, need help looking for a job, need court support with child custody, they can come to DCARA.”
Tara: “We will continue to work together. Now, as for the second part of the MOU, DeafHope will provide DCARA staff with continuous training. We’ve already provided a brief presentation to DCARA’s full staff meeting. Second, we’ve provided an all-day training on domestic violence and sexual violence in the Deaf community to DCARA’s full staff. Third, we will offer DCARA staff the full 40-hour domestic violence training for interested staff to become certified by the state of California to work with survivors.”
Jim: “I’m thrilled because we’ve been providing services, but now we can take advantage of DeafHope’s expertise so DCARA staff can be prepared to work with survivors with better understanding of domestic violence and sexual violence.”
Tara: “The third part of the MOU involves the community. DeafHope and DCARA are excited to provide joint community accountability forums where the community can come together to discuss issues around domestic violence, sexual violence, and abuse in the Deaf community.”
Jim: “I’m thrilled to announce the first two dates. Friday November 8th from 6pm to 9pm at the Deaf Community Center with the topic of “Social Media.” As you know it’s a hot topic today with social media and issues around domestic violence, sexual violence. That Friday Nov 8th, there will be two featured guest speakers, Aracelia Aguilar and Rochelle Greenwell. They will give a presentation then there will be an open discussion. That’s really exciting. The second forum will happen on Friday Feb 7th. We haven’t decided a topic yet, but we will be sure to announce it.”
Tara: “If you have any questions, need information, or need help, feel free to contact any of us anytime. If you want to contact DeafHope, you can do so at deafhope@deaf-hope.org. One of the staff will respond.”
Jim: “If you need to contact DCARA, you can either contact us by e-mail or videophone. For e-mail: info@dcara.org. For VP: 510:343:6670. I’m really excited to work with DeafHope. And we look forward to serving the community!”
Tara: “Me too! I’m looking forward to better serving Deaf survivors and the community.”