Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance

Directors' Virtual Meet Up
2025-08-06 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
The Statewide Hotline/Crisis Response Team would like to offer this space as an ongoing opportunity to increase partnership, learn more about the needs at agencies, have a place to share and learn more about Statewide Hotline operations, and to provide the space for folx to discuss challenges, highlights, regional updates, trends, etc. We look forward to seeing you all every other month in 2025 (February, April, June, August, October and December) on the 1st Wednesday from 2-3p!
Note: We will try to accommodate last minute language translation requests but we typically need two weeks to secure interpretation services.

VAdata Training
2025-08-08 10:00 - 15:00 | Training Center, 1413 W. Main St., Richmond, VA, 23220
Sexual and domestic violence agencies across the state use VAdata to track services and manage their grant reporting. For new staff, this means there’s a lot to learn about VAdata, how data is captured, and how to use data to tell the story of survivors in your area. For advanced users, there may be more questions about the many reports available or specific questions about how data shows up in those reports.
After this training, participants will understand more about the history and scope of the VAdata system, how to use and audit queries to retrieve information, how to use reports in grant writing, raising community awareness and more, and how data entry practices impact data and reporting statewide. Participants are encouraged to bring any and all questions to the training along with their laptops to apply practical tips learned to their own agency’s VAdata account.
The deadline to register for this training is Aug 1st.
Note: We will try to accommodate last minute language translation requests but we typically need two weeks to secure interpretation services.

Statewide Advocates' Meeting
2025-08-20 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-10-15 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-12-17 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual- Zoom
The Statewide Hotline/Crisis Response Team would like to offer this space as an ongoing opportunity for folx working on the front lines and on the hotlines providing direct services and support! This is a space with opportunities to meet other advocates across VA, learn more about the Statewide Hotline and Project for Empowerment of Survivors (PES) and to share trends, highlights, events, regional updates, etc. We look forward to seeing you all every other month in 2025 on the 3rd Wednesday from 2-3p.
If you know of other Advocates, Hotline and/or Direct Services staff that could benefit from joining the space, please send their contact information to lwhite@vsdvalliance.org.
Note: We will try to accommodate last minute language translation requests but we typically need two weeks to secure interpretation services.

State and Local Partners Meeting
2025-08-21 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-11-13 10:00 - 12:00
These interactive quarterly gatherings of advocates, preventionists, sexual and domestic violence agency administrators, state funders and other partners serving survivors of violence are opportunities for connection and collaboration on the local, regional, and state level. The State and Local Partners Meetings are a unique forum for agencies to share their expertise and experiences from the front lines with funding partners who would like to learn more about emerging trends, needs, and celebrations among our communities.
This invitation is open to advocates, preventionists, funders, and other partners serving survivors and/or supporting community education on healthy relationships. Our time together will be spent learning from each other, engaging in discussion on statewide issues, sharing valuable resources, etc.
All four meetings in 2025 will be virtual, meeting via zoom from 10am – noon. We anticipate that participants are coming prepared to engage in conversations that will continue to move forward the work of ending sexual and domestic violence here in the Commonwealth.

Advocate Wellness Experiences: Practicing the Pause
2025-08-22 10:00 - 15:00 | Abingdon, VA, VA, United States
Guided by the perspective that there is more power in pausing than relentlessly pushing through – join us to explore and co-create new ways of being in our work. A “third” way that calls for an intentional and critical paradigm shift in the anti-violence movement, from reacting to the crisis of burnout towards building healing-centered capacity to respond to and even prevent it; to not just survive, but to thrive.
Together, we will unpack the impacts of this work and try on practices that support recentering ourselves amidst it. Our time will be reflective, interactive, experiential, joy-filled, and will embrace spaciousness and pauses. This session is also intended to nurture connections among fellow wellness allies, and ready us with insight and practices to continue our work whole and well.
Each session will be organically tailored to hold space and provide practices for the current needs of the field and the experiences and intentions of those who register. After registering, participants will be asked to complete a survey to fold in your perspective on how to meaningfully craft the session. In addition, the weather and unique location and space of each session will inform our time together.

Future of 24/7 Services: Regional Conversation (Reston)
2025-08-28 08:00 - 17:00 | Reston, VA, Reston, VA, United States
In 2023, after two years of working with all of you, the Action Alliance released Sustaining the Movement, a 10-Year Plan for Virginia’s Sexual and Domestic Violence Programs. This document is now guiding our work internally, and with legislators, funders, and all of you. The VOCA funding crisis made the value of this road map clear to all of us: it requires dedicated strategy and action to ensure that all corners of Virginia continue to benefit from effective sexual and domestic violence services and prevention initiatives.
One of the first actions described in the plan is to: Develop an updated description of the work of SDVAs that recognizes how services and programs will continue to evolve in response to community needs as well as wider influences.
We know more now about trauma, healing, and prevention than we did 30 years ago, and it has changed our work—and we can expect that knowledge to continue to evolve. Technology has expanded our opportunities to connect—and has cranked up the pace of our work. No doubt there are technological changes on the horizon that we have yet to imagine. The roots of our work, which are deeply intertwined with movements for equality and justice have held strong, and we have also been called upon to expand our thinking about how we build upon those roots. Still, we have never wavered from the commitment to serve ALL survivors.
We are going to begin our work on this BIG objective (an updated description of the work of SDVAs) with regional conversations about the future of 24/7 services delivery. There are no preconceived ideas about where this conversation will take us. We plan to create a space where you can ask all the “what if” questions that are on your mind. We hope to hear differing perspectives offered with both passion and respect for differences. Importantly, we believe that the outcome must come from the field collectively, and not from a small committee or a funding agency, and so we are hoping that ALL of our member agencies can participate or send a representative to at least one of these conversations.
*If you register and are unable to attend, please consider sending a representative in your stead. Email the change to training@vsdvalliance.org
Registration for this event closes Aug 22nd.

Future of 24/7 Services: Regional Conversation (Harrisonburg)
2025-09-02 10:30 - 15:00 | Harrisonburg, VA, Harrisonburg, VA, United States
In 2023, after two years of working with all of you, the Action Alliance released Sustaining the Movement, a 10-Year Plan for Virginia’s Sexual and Domestic Violence Programs. This document is now guiding our work internally, and with legislators, funders, and all of you. The VOCA funding crisis made the value of this road map clear to all of us: it requires dedicated strategy and action to ensure that all corners of Virginia continue to benefit from effective sexual and domestic violence services and prevention initiatives.
One of the first actions described in the plan is to: Develop an updated description of the work of SDVAs that recognizes how services and programs will continue to evolve in response to community needs as well as wider influences.
We know more now about trauma, healing, and prevention than we did 30 years ago, and it has changed our work—and we can expect that knowledge to continue to evolve. Technology has expanded our opportunities to connect—and has cranked up the pace of our work. No doubt there are technological changes on the horizon that we have yet to imagine. The roots of our work, which are deeply intertwined with movements for equality and justice have held strong, and we have also been called upon to expand our thinking about how we build upon those roots. Still, we have never wavered from the commitment to serve ALL survivors.
We are going to begin our work on this BIG objective (an updated description of the work of SDVAs) with regional conversations about the future of 24/7 services delivery. There are no preconceived ideas about where this conversation will take us. We plan to create a space where you can ask all the “what if” questions that are on your mind. We hope to hear differing perspectives offered with both passion and respect for differences. Importantly, we believe that the outcome must come from the field collectively, and not from a small committee or a funding agency, and so we are hoping that ALL of our member agencies can participate or send a representative to at least one of these conversations.
*If you register and are unable to attend, please consider sending a representative in your stead. Email the change to training@vsdvalliance.org
Registration for this event closes Aug 27th.

Emergence Virtual Organizational Session
2025-09-03 13:00 - 14:30 | Virtual
Wellness and impact – at the individual, organizational, and community levels – are essential, aspirational, and challenging. It’s easy to dismiss them as impossible, luxuries that we don’t have time for in the chaos of our crisis-oriented work. BUT… WHAT IF?
What if we valued our own health and potential in the same way we pursue freedom and thriving for those harmed by violence? What if articulate a human right to connection and sustainability? What if we break down big concepts like wellness and impact) into manageable components – stance, breath, pace, moral compass, strategy, relationship – and practice as if our lives depend on it? What if we take time to dream big, rest, laugh, and love?
People in our communities need us to be well and to conjure impact. 2025 is a year for us to GO bold and GO together. Emergence offers opportunities for SA/DV leaders and teams to join in virtual and in-person gatherings that will normalize wellness and exponentially increase our impact in VA with the people who need us most.

Emergence In-Person Retreat
2025-09-08 - 2025-09-10 | Roanoke, VA, VA, United States
This final Emergence gathering will focus on strengthening relationships, expertise, and collective power for healing-centered transformation. We will learn about moving from reacting to the crisis of burnout towards the healing-centered capacity to prevent it and build muscle to create robust practices for sustained wholeness, connection, and power.

Embracing Community-Level Prevention
2025-10-14 10:00 - 16:00 | Training Center, 1413 W. Main St., Richmond, VA, 23220
One way we describe an integral practice in primary prevention is to water your roots deep. Which means that the prevention work you do should exist deeply in the places that you would like to make the greatest impact. For this training we will be discussing how to weave primary prevention into your community and the institutions that make this work possible. We will examine ways to sprinkle primary prevention throughout your agency and make connections with the institutions you would like to work closely with. This training is intended for prevention staff, agency leadership, and community partners. Attending the Principles of Primary Prevention training prior to this training is encouraged but not required.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completing this training, participants will be able to:
o Formulate a shared vision and develop a strategic plan for their agency’s prevention efforts with their colleagues (leadership and/or grant writers).
o Discuss the common goals they share with preventionists from other agencies for ending sexual and domestic violence across the state.
o Describe effective prevention programming and describe a vision of community-level prevention for their agency.
o Understand how to apply strategies from the 2nd primary prevention guideline in “Fostering Community Resilience” titled Institutionalized in Organizational Culture.
o Use tools and models they received to support their efforts of institutionalizing prevention into their organization.
Registration for this training closes on Oct 8th.

Violence Prevention in Action ECHO
2025-10-15 10:30 - 12:00 | Virtual- Zoom
Join our Violence Prevention in Action ECHO program to build your prevention network, connect over challenging cases, and stay on top of best practices in sexual and intimate partner violence primary prevention!
Project ECHO is an international, evidence-based model for training and peer-to-peer learning, originally developed at the University of New Mexico for use by doctors and other medical providers. We’ve used the model since 2019 to cultivate a thriving community of preventionists from Sexual and Domestic Violence Agencies across the Commonwealth.
For more information about our use of the ECHO model or the structure of the session, please visit: https://bit.ly/VPAecho.

Directors' Virtual Meet Up
2025-12-03 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual- Zoom
