To celebrate our 40th anniversary, we’ve put together a multi-pronged project centered on stories—collecting them, sharing them, and keeping them. Components of our 40th project include an interactive digital timeline, an audio podcast, an oral history booklet featuring the voices of forty movement makers, and a poster featuring forty milestones in the movement.

We hope you’ll explore these offerings and find something that inspires you. To view our interactive digital timeline featuring photos, documents, text-based stories, videos, and more from the last forty years of the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia, click the button below. You can comment on the various timeline entries, and also submit your own.

40 Years of the Action Alliance

In celebration of our 40th anniversary, we’ve put together an oral history of the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia.

The booklet and podcast linked below are the results of many interviews and conversations with movement leaders, Action Alliance staff (both past and present), allies in the work, and other folks who have been central to moving Virginia toward a violence-free future.

We recognize that this history is not exhaustive and that there are as many movement stories as there are participants in that movement. For that reason, we hope that this history-keeping will be ongoing and that these projects mark not a completion, but a beginning. We invite you to be a part of the story by submitting your story to our 40th-anniversary collection form.

Celebrate with 40th Anniversary Swag!

Keep the celebration going with our official 40th-anniversary swag! From hoodies to mugs, there are a variety of items available on our Bonfire shop to unite our voices as we honor the work that has been done over the last 40 years.

“40 Years. 40 Milestones.” Poster

As the Action Alliance celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2021, this poster highlights 40 milestones in the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia. The visual theme likens the many stories and diverse viewpoints that make up this movement — like scraps of fabric are joined together into a single quilt.

Be a Part of the Story!

In celebration of our 40th anniversary, we’re continuing to collect stories from people who have been part of this coalition to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia these past 40 years — people like you! Working together, we have made great strides in changing the conversation around sexual and intimate partner violence. Your story is part of our story. We invite you to share your stories, memories, and photos to be part of our interactive digital timeline — and Action Alliance history.

If you’re ready to share your story, just click the link below to be redirected to our story collection form. There, you can choose to answer a specific question or just share a story or milestone without using one of our prompts.

We can’t wait to see the memories you’ll share!

About Our 40th Design Elements

As we began planning the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we wanted to create a visual theme for the campaign that would be emblematic of the history of our coalition’s work, tie the various pieces of the campaign together, and motivate our community of advocates, donors, survivors, and partners to be aware of and celebrate this momentous occasion with us!

Because our coalition is made up of many different organizations and people from disparate localities and regions with many different identities and histories, we chose the theme “Many Stories, One Movement,” visually represented by a quilt motif. When all our various histories are woven together, they create one history — the way quilt pieces come together to form one beautiful object. This visual is also evocative of one of the roots of our movement: people coming together in quilting circles and using that space to build collective power. It’s about various pieces coming together to make something beautiful, in coalition.

The red color palette and imagery of the ruby symbolize the fact that this is our 40th — the “ruby anniversary.”



We hope that this campaign has prompted you to feel:

  • Connected to a history and a developing story, a lineage, and a movement;
  • Inspired to be part of this history (and even to share your story!); and
  • Curious about the history of the Action Alliance and the stories that are woven together to create that history.

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