Metro Weekly

No Silence on Violence

La Clinica del Peublo launches campaign to educate Latino LGBT youth about IPV

This weekend, La Clinica del Pueblo and a handful of other local organizations, including the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, will launch a new campaign: ”Stopping Domestic Violence.”

”We want young people to be as much aware of the resources that are out there, and to be as educated as possible about Intimate Partner Violence (IPV),” says Molly Goggin-Kehm, a youth program counselor at Mpodérate!, La Clinica’s drop-in center for LGBT youth.

”They [should] never be ignorant or lack the knowledge that’s going to prevent them from seeking help for being able to realize the signs of an abusive relationship.”

To help reach youth, La Clinica is launching the anti-violence campaign at Mpodérate!, 3055 Mount Pleasant St. NW, from noon to 5 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 23.

”We’re going to have food and games and people doing just a kind of basic workshop on what is IPV, how to prevent it –just the kind of 101.”

According to Goggin-Kehm, marginalized communities, such as LGBT Latinos, are more reluctant to come forward about IPV.

”There’s just a lot of stigma related to it,” she says. ”People can [threaten to] kind of use the fact that someone is lesbian, gay or trans against someone. Like, ‘If you leave me I’m going to out you.’ There’s a lot of different factors.”

La Clinica is hoping to change that with this campaign in the coming year with free programming.

”Once a month there are trainings on healthy relationships, what kind of steps can you take for prevention, how to know the signs of an abusive relationship, what are the laws that exist in D.C. to protect you?” Goggin-Kehm says.

”To give all that information available to the youth, we’ll be doing workshops throughout the entire year.”

For more information about the La Clinica del Pueblo’s Stopping Domestic Violence campaign, call 202-462-4788 or visit lcdp.org.

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