I Want to Get Involved: Overview

There are many ways to get involved with DAIS! Volunteers and interns make our life-saving work possible. From working directly with domestic violence survivors and their children, to helping with community outreach and fundraising, volunteers are an essential part of the DAIS team.

We’re regularly in need of volunteers with a wide variety of interests and skills—to find the best fit for your interests, please click on the links above, or scroll below to learn more!

DAIS Makes a Difference

In recent months, the demand for DAIS services has risen sharply. For example, DAIS served more people in the first three quarters of 2008 than in all of 2007.

That trend has continued in 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, DAIS experienced:

a 53% increase in demand for Children’s Program services
a 44% increase in demand for emergency shelter
a 74% increase demand for our Crisis Response Program

Across the board, virtually all of our programs are seeing record-breaking levels of need.

In addition, the severity of abuse being reported by DAIS clients has escalated and deepened:

DAIS has seen victims of more brutal violence than ever before—victims with more severe injuries such as traumatic brain injuries, victims of more violent sexual assaults, and abusers who are using weapons more often.
Abusers are becoming more brazen in their abuse—hurting their victims in public places, leaving bruises on areas of their victims’ bodies that can be easily seen.
DAIS clients are expressing more fear than ever before and are feeling more desperate as other resources available to them in the community are diminishing. We’ve seen more clients who are suicidal.
An increasing number of our clients are telling us that their abusers have made death threats against them.
Clients are also reporting that it is harder to leave their abusers because of the financial crisis.

DAIS services are crucial to the health and safety of our entire community. At the end of the day, we think of our work as homicide prevention—vital for people who have nowhere else to turn.