Devin Long: Hi. Hello. Thank you so much for joining. My name is Devin Long, and I am the Grant and Outreach Manager for Navajo United Methodist Center, also known as New Beginnings. Thank you for joining. I'm really excited to talk about our program today.

We are located in San Juan County. We are a transitional living program for men, women, and children who are survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Now, our program is a little bit different because when someone is in an immediate danger or a crisis situation, they go to a shelter-type facility that has staff 24/7 and they take them in immediately.

Our program is transitional living, which means that they are able to stay on our campus for up to a year in one of our many houses rent and utility cost-free. We are one of four programs in the entire state of New Mexico, which means that we primarily take residents from all over the city of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Texas. However, in the last couple of years, we have actually had residents that came from Louisiana and New York and California. So, we take anyone, regardless of where they're living, as long as they have had experiences within the last year of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Our campus currently consists of six different houses. Some of them are multi-family homes being as large as 1,900 square feet. And then, we also have some that are smaller and single family mobile homes.

During the year 2023, we actually were able to work with the City of Farmington to obtain a new mobile home, bringing our available housing to six. And officially this year, we did work with San Juan Regional Community Reinvestment Committee, and we are renovating a studio space on our campus, bringing our available housing units to seven this year. We do not go off of how many survivors we serve. Instead, our agency goes off of how many survivors are able to sleep safely at night. So, we go off of what is called bed nights.

During the year 2022, we provided 4,404 bed nights. During the year 2023, with this additional new home on our campus, we provided 5,016 bed nights, which is huge, that's incredible. And this year, we're hoping that we're going to be reaching closer towards 6,000 bed nights with this additional studio space. However, our program is not just houses. We also have the state of New Mexico's only trauma-focused child care center, and we also have an on-site counseling center called Phoenix Counseling.

Now, our child care center and our counseling center don't just provide services to those in our transitional living program, they're also available to those within the community. So, anyone needing reliable child care or mental health services, we're here for that. Our child care center, it provides reliable child care Monday through Friday, 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. Our child care center has been open since 2021. And our CEO of New Beginnings, Melissa Tarazon, she is a psychotherapist, she's been practicing for 14 years, and she realized that she had a lot of youth with emotional and behavioral challenges. And she also saw that in our agency, reliable child care was a huge barrier for the survivors in our program. So, she meshed these two challenges, I guess you could say, together. And she created our trauma-focused child care center, which provides emotional and behavioral services to children that typically fall between the cracks. We are hoping to be able to reach the youth before they are needing counseling services when they get older.

Now, our child care center is very unique because all of our teachers and staff in that are completely trauma-trained. They know how to work with children when they're having anger issues, they have learning disabilities. And currently, right now, we have 58 children that are in that program.

One very unique piece about our child care center also is that we have a child trauma advocate that works with all of the children. And all of the parents in that center. So, she conducts multiple screenings like our Adverse Childhood Experience screening, which she does with the caregivers or primary guardians. She asks them questions, has the child had a family member that has been incarcerated? Have they experienced sexual abuse? And she is able to implement behavioral intervention plans that works with the teachers and the families at home to achieve certain types of goals. And hopefully, that child is able to be better prepared for when they're entering the education system. Our child trauma advocate also helps to advocate for the children within the community.

That is we're very excited to also announce we were just awarded a grant that is helping us to create a new part of New Beginnings, which is a community advocate and a family specialist advocate, which will only work with members in the community that have had experiences with domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. So, 100% of the survivors in the residential program have either witnessed or experienced domestic violence, and it is estimated that 40% of the children in our program are also sexual assault survivors.

Now, we have had many community victims come to us that don't need transitional living. For an example, we've had a woman who her abuser was incarcerated. She had a home, and she just needed help with her divorce paperwork, she needed help with the restraining order, she needed help with her child being able to obtain counseling services. So, we have now established two different roles to be able to serve those in the community where they don't have to necessarily give up their living situation and move into a shelter-type environment. They're able to utilize our Department of Justice program, which does provide rent and utility assistance as well as individualized case management. And then, they're also able to work with our community advocate and our family specialist. to attend court hearings, file paperwork, and to obtain parenting classes and counseling services.

So, we have a lot of things that have been happening in our program in the last five years. Our CEO has been with us for seven. I have been with the agency for almost four years now. And we currently consist of almost 19 staff, which is a huge expansion from when we used to have four of us. So, we're really excited about the growth and I really just want to emphasize the amount of community support that we have received in the last four years. It is amazing those that have listen to us and have learned how they can serve those that are in their workplace, their friends, their family. They're reaching out to us and they're saying, "How can I help them to get into a good situation? What type of resources are out there?" And our entire sense of community is important on knowledge, and being able to help all of those that are in need, because you never know when you're going to end up in a bad situation yourself or a loved one.

So, we're very thankful to all of you for listening today and for advocating for those that need it. We have all of our survivors that are in our program. Unfortunately, they don't have a support system. But with the amount of support that you all are giving our survivors by supporting our program, they see that there is an entire community out there clapping and cheering them on and our success rates are through the roof. We are changing generations, and we have you to thank for that. So, thank you everyone for joining today and thank you again for San Juan Regional for having me here. It has been an honor and have a wonderful rest of your day.