Finding Our Voices

Fri, 10/20/2023 - 10:00am

Patrisha McLean

Deb Bergeron, center, founder of 100 Women Who Care Southern Maine, flanked by Patrisha McLean, left, and Mary Lou Smith. McLean is the founder/president of Finding Our Voices. Smith is one of 45 Maine survivors whose photo portraits are featured on the Finding Our Voices posters de-stigmatizing domestic abuse in 90 Maine towns. Photo by Patrisha McLean

A group of dynamic Southern Maine women have donated $58,000 to Finding Our Voices in what Patrisha McLean, the president/founder of the grassroots nonprofit giving peer-to-peer hand-ups to women survivors of domestic abuse, calls “the gift that keeps on giving.” The $18,000 awarded to the group in February has more than tripled with a steady stream of donations by powerful businesswomen who attended the winter gathering of 100 Women Who Care Southern Maine.

Finding Our Voices breaks the silence of domestic abuse across the state through bold survivor-powered projects that include a poster campaign featuring the photo portraits of 45 women survivors including Governor Janet T. Mills. The money the group is collecting from the southern Maine group is earmarked for its Get Out Stay Out Fund paying for items that are critical to the safety of women fleeing domestic violence. These include emergency short-term motel stays, apartment rent and security deposits, car repairs, gas cards, home security devices, and legal consultations.

100 Women Who Care Southern Maine has donated $520,000 to 37 local charities since Deb Bergeron founded the chapter in 2014. Now with 350 members, it will celebrate its ninth anniversary at the Nov. 6 meeting at the Elks Lodge in Portland.

Members of this local chapter of a worldwide organization commit to giving $50 four times a year, with their contribution having a supernova impact when multiplied by the contributions of hundreds of members.

The group meet once a season at a festive gathering at the lodge. After spirited socializing, they get down to business: Hearing five-minute talks from leaders of three Southern Maine nonprofits benefitting residents of southern Maine. The members who are present at the gathering and also joining in over zoom cast their vote. The winning nonprofit receives a bountiful bundle of $50 donations from the group’s members.

The collective giving for Finding Our Voices in February from the 350 members was $18,000. This was augmented by a $5,000 matching grant arranged by Bergeron from the Richard M. Schulze Foundation.

Now it was time for what Bergeron calls “the ripple effect” from the dynamic and caring members who attend the gatherings.

In April, the director of a nonprofit involving fine art photography reached out to McLean with a few questions, and within weeks sent Finding Our Voices $5,000.

This brought the donation derived from 100 Women Who Care Southern Maine to $28,000.

In July came a letter from two principals of a law firm: "We are both members of 100+ Women and we learned about Finding Our Voices from your presentation to our group. We discussed your good work with the family [of an estate we represent] and they agreed with supporting your mission.” In the envelope was a check for $20,000.

Now the total was $48,000.

The week of Oct. 10, a woman who had previously emailed McLean, "I was so impressed with what you have created through Finding Our Voices and I was thrilled that 100 WWC voted for your organization” recommended the nonprofit as the recipient of an annual donor fund. The $10,000 check that resulted brought the total amount to date bringing safety, comfort and freedom to Maine women and children from Southern Maine women who care, to $58,000.

"This money,” McLean said, “has staved off car repossessions and apartment evictions, turned the electricity back on for a mom and four children in the apartment they graduated to from a domestic abuse shelter, and gotten gas cards and a quick car repair for a woman needing to flee the state because her ex was being released on bail after strangling her. The largesse is newly helpful as we head into the holiday season, when demand for our quick-response peer-to-peer hand-ups spike due to holidays being the most dangerous time to be trapped with controlling and violent intimate partners."

Referrals come daily from district attorney victim advocates, caseworkers at homeless shelters, domestic abuse agencies, immigrant resource centers, plus police, and therapists from across Maine who often have scoured the area’s resources for the desperately needed funding, and come up empty.

Deb Bergeron is a professional life coach through her business Ocean of Possibilities. She said, "When I first learned of 100 Women Who Care I was inspired by the simplicity and elegance of the concept. Knowing how difficult it is for local non-profits to raise the funds required to carry on their work, and how easily even the best volunteer's intentions can be thwarted by today's busy schedules, 100 Women Who Care seemed to be the perfect solution.”

McLean echoes this. “Finding Our Voices has a paid staff of one and we work out of my home. Maintaining our record of not turning away any Maine domestic violence victim who meets our criteria already takes most of the hours in a very long work day. Grant applications sometimes take days to complete and of course don’t always succeed. So to give a five minute presentation that results in a dynamic group of caring women showering us with checks that they personally write out themselves is a tidal wave of love and light for our nonprofit, and for the countless women survivors of domestic abuse in our midst."

For more information about joining 100 Women Who Care Southern Maine, visit https://100womenwhocaresouthernmaine.com For information about Finding Our Voices visit https://findingourvoices.net or contact the group’s founder/president Patrisha McLean at hello@findingourvoices.net