Our New Mission, Vision, and the Work Ahead

This Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I’m pleased to share our new mission and vision, along with the priorities that will guide our work in the years ahead. Survivors, advocates, staff, and our board of directors helped shape this direction. Their perspectives remind us how much we have learned—and how much work we still have to do together.

Our New Mission and Vision

Our Mission

We are here to end intimate partner violence in the moment and for all time. We support survivors and their families along their journeys towards healing and thriving, advocate to improve systems impacting survivors’ lives, and partner with our community to prevent harm before it begins.

Our Vision

A community free from intimate partner violence and all forms of abuse, healthy and thriving families, and systems that are supportive and accountable.

*Our mission now uses the term "intimate partner violence," or IPV, to more accurately describe our focus and the violence we work to prevent and end.

Our Guiding Priorities for 2026–2029

These four priorities give us clear direction for supporting survivors and their families, strengthening prevention, and improving the systems and community responses that affect their lives.

Increase and Improve Access to Healing

We remove barriers and expand access to healing and intervention for survivors and their families.

Targeted Systems Advocacy

We advocate for system-level change to better support and protect survivors and their families.

Foster Community-Wide Commitment

We build a community of shared responsibility to end IPV and support survivors.

Support Youth Healing & Well-Being

We support the healing and well-being of youth and strengthen their path to a brighter future.

How We Carry This Work Forward

Throughout this work, we remain committed to services that are accessible, open, and low barrier; an approach that is responsive and radically survivor-centered; and support for the full spectrum of survivor well-being, including health and wellness.

We will continue listening to survivors, learning from their experiences, and responding to the needs they identify. These commitments will shape how we put our priorities into practice and how we work with our community.

Together, our priorities, mission, and vision will guide our work to support survivors, prevent harm, and help build a community free from intimate partner violence.

Thank you for all the ways you have helped make this work possible, and for continuing to stand with survivors and with NDS as we move forward.

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