Angelina Rosado describes youth prevention work in schools and shelters
Rosado says Sisters in Purple's Future Purple Nation works with schools and shelters to teach youth about domestic violence and teen dating violence. She says children need real resources so they do not carry anger into gun violence and future harm.
If I just may add about youth.
So Sisters in Purple, we have Future Purple Nation, which is our youth programming where we work with the schools.
We come into schools and a lot of it is teachers themselves, their guidance counselors, you know, parent coordinators reaching out to us to make sure, as well as our youth organizations reaching out to us to not just talk about teen dating violence, which is in the month of February.
But also, a lot of these kids, like Stephanie said, have experienced domestic violence in their households, right?
So going to the shelters and working with the young people who experienced domestic violence, but help them understand, I was 15 years old when I entered a domestic violence relationship.
I had no idea.
That I was even in one, right?
So understanding those signs, because the people that came before me in my generation, they weren't allowed to talk about their domestic violence, right?
Those stories weren't allowed to be told.
As we see how old Vawa is, even there's the Protection Act against violence on women, right?
My grandmother is in her 70s.
She had no protection, right?
So these conversations were not normalized.
And when we come in,
into community, we make sure that our young people are really engaged.
You'd be really surprised how much they care to actually know the information and really absorb it and really implement that in their lives.
I'm a mother of two children.
My daughter's 14.
She plays no games when it comes to understanding domestic violence, which also helped her really shape friendships, right, in her life and how she created boundaries with people.
And these are the things that are very pivotal to help prevent domestic violence from escalating, teen dating violence from escalating into domestic violence and understanding that.
Our kids are angry, right?
They don't have real resources.
And when we talk about the reduction of gun violence, right, if we are not addressing domestic violence in these children's households, they're going to come outside and they're going to be very angry about things, right?
And they don't know how to channel that.
So leaving domestic violence out of the conversation is really detrimental to our children and our future.