For our individual members:

Get Involved! THANKSGIVING DRIVES

As a TCFV friend member, a great way for you to get involved is to support your local shelter and family violence agency  by donating food and/or items.  This time of year, many family violence programs host Thanksgiving food drives. Visit our online service directory to find the family violence program in your community and give them a call to see if they are accepting thanksgiving donations

For example, Hope’s Door in Plano is hosting a Thanksgiving Food Drive.  They invite you to join them in providing traditional Thanksgiving meals to the families in their shelter and in their transitional housing program. Their goal is to provide meals to more than 100 families. Please consider donating the “fixings” for a holiday dinner or making a monetary donation of $50.00 to pay for one family’s dinner. Donations can be dropped off any time until November 18, 2011.  The food will be packaged in laundry baskets and Rubbermaid totes and delivered by Hope’s Door.

Nancy Harrington 

In this issue, we would like to honor Nancy Harrington, a strong and long-time advocate for family violence victims in Montgomery County and throughout Texas, who died in a car crash in Galveston on September 8th.

Nancy, a founder of the Montgomery County Women’s Center, was the executive director for 22 years.  She developed a strong program.  Recognizing early the need to offer survivors legal options, Nancy was one of the first executive directors to hire an on-site attorney.  Nancy was a strong supporter of TCFV, a TCFV individual member for more than 20 years, and served on many TCFV committees.  Nancy was a strong advocate for social change on many levels. In the early 1980s, she formed the Montgomery County chapter of the National Organization for Women and served on a number of state association boards. Throughout her career, Nancy received awards, including the Federation of Houston Professional Women Lifetime Achievement Award and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault Champion for Social Change.

A memorial service was held in her home state of Arkansas, and another memorial service was held at the Northwood Unitarian Universalist Church in The Woodlands.

If you would like more information, please click here.

TCFV President Gloria Terry was honored to participate in Verizon’s Journey of Hope Tour in Dallas on October 28.

HopeLine from Verizon and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) teamed up for a cross-country bus tour, the Journey of Hope, to collect and share the stories of people affected by domestic violence and those who are passionate about ending it. The public was invited to join the tour in eight cities across the country to share their stories of hope and perseverance. The event focused on uniting and inspiring the general public to get involved in ending domestic violence.

At each destination, domestic violence advocates, activists and survivors had the opportunity to record their experience with the issue on a Verizon smart phone or tablet. These stories were collected to be shared at facebook.com/Verizon.

Verizon also made a donation to a local domestic violence program in each of the designated cities, and encouraged participants at each stop to contribute used cell phones to the HopeLine program. HopeLine has distributed more than 106,000 phones with more than 319 minutes of free wireless service to be used by victims of domestic abuse since the program’s inception in 1995.

Dallas was the final stop on the Journey of Hope. The tour spanned for the entire month of October, Domestic Violence Awareness Month.