Letter: 2020 has been a year of incredible challenges for Live Violence Free

2020 has been a year of incredible challenges and changes for our organization. At Live Violence Free, we worked hard to continue to meet the needs of our community. Our resilient staff, volunteers, and board members have risen to the challenge and provided stabilizing support to the community, and we are here every step of the way.

This year has been full of changes. As the new Executive Director, I am humbled and honored to be in leadership with this incredible organization’s staff, board, and partners. I am deeply committed to our community and passionate about the vision of LVF. I was raised in South Lake Tahoe and have deep roots and connections with the community. More than ever, LVF is essential to our community, and I am thrilled to join and support the organization in promoting a violence-free community.

Our services impacted 4,950 community members this last year. We provided over 30,000 services in our crisis support and advocacy, counseling, safe housing, legal, supervised visitation, and education programs.

Bill Gates said, “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.” I am so proud of our organization’s ability to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. We’ve modified our service delivery in the following ways;

● We provided contactless basic needs support.
● We launched a new and more informative website.
● We provided 24/7 live chat features on our new website.
● We launched the One Conversation campaign to inform the community on how to
support victims.
● We increased our social media outreach.
● We provided virtual prevention and education programming in our schools.
● We provided telephone crisis support for victims and survivors.
● We provide socially distanced therapy appointments.
● We launched the One Conversation Podcast in English and Spanish for our
community.

We have learned this year that crises and challenges can affect our neighbors at any time.

We want to thank everyone who has volunteered their time, donated resources, and
supported us financially this year. Our supporters help to make a real impact on real people every day. By working together, we can ensure that everyone in our community thrives. We wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday and new year!

With much gratitude,
Chelcee Thomas
Executive Director
Live Violence Free

For more information on making a donation, volunteering, and our services, check out our website at www.liveviolencefree.org.