Mission Statement
The Mission of Massachusetts Survivors Outreach (MASO) is heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, shed light into the darkness that surrounds these issues as well as provide research and continuing education to professionals working with victims of abuse especially on alternative therapies in treating victims of abuse in the health and wellness communities. MASO will also provide the tools to overcome the physical, psychological, legal, and spiritual obstacles they face on a daily basis.
MASO believes violence against women and children results from the use of force or threat to achieve and maintain control over others in intimate relationships, and from societal abuse of power and domination in the forms of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, able-bodyism, ageism and other oppressions. MASO recognizes that the abuses of power in society foster battering by perpetuating conditions, which condone violence against women and children. Therefore, it is also the mission of MASO to work for major societal changes in the state of Massachusetts that are necessary to eliminate both personal and societal violence and to eradicate social conditions which contribute to violence against women and children.
MASO's work includes advocating for social change and coalition building at the local, state, regional and national levels.
Description
We are a grass roots organization based in Massachusetts who advocate for victims of domestic violence dealing with the family court system, aid victims in the healing process by providing holistic services such as evidenced based Energy Medicine, Reiki, Coaching, Stress Reduction, and Meditation, and research solutions to the growing epidemic of abuse in our society. We also blog about domestic violence in health care and healing from abuse.
Our founders are divorced parents who survived the failed broken system that is designed to protect all victims of abuse. In searching for answers to their own cases, they began seeing a bigger calling into finding the solutions to this epidemic. Yes epidemic. Until then, they were blinded to the severity of the injustices victims faced every day as well as blinded by the falsity that the current laws on the books would protect us all and our children and failed.
The annual cost of ignoring domestic abuse issues and the way family courts handle domestic abuse cases? In excess of $6 Billion.
Learning about the severity of the problem in Massachusetts when we have young children at stake, empowered these parents to want to do more.
We moved into our office space in June 2012 and started out of the gate with twelve interns with backgrounds ranging from business, economics, web, design, women and gender studies, psychology, sociology and law.
We became listed as a non-profit in Massachusetts. We created our mission statement and other organization formalities including a logo and branding. We created a facebook and twitter accounts and set up a website.
We partook in the legislative processes and rally surrounding Melissa’s Bill in July 2012 as well as several other pending bills with seven other non-profit organizations, lawyers, and legislatures.
We continued our research in the injustices victims of abuse are faced with in the state of Massachusetts and still working on this data as we speak.
We resumed our healing services in September offering a variety of healing services and classes including coaching, meditation, energy medicine, stress reduction, reiki, holistic health counseling.
In October, we launched a community awareness initiative in support of Domestic Violence Awareness Month and held three seminars on Gaslighting abuse, Recognizing whether it is abuse or just an argument, and Holistic healing for victims of abuse.
We have partnered and collaborated with other organizations of issues. We have engaged local leadership and other local organizations for support and allegiance. We have written about reiki on "Reiki can do no harm or can it", regarding the election process, Commentary on Sandy Hook Tragedy, and we have a few more pending that we are working on.
Considering where we were six months ago and what we have accomplished, we have done so much and have come a far way.
We are an organization of action as we believe that actions speak much louder than words. We still have a long way to go, and we are extremely grateful to all our supporters who have helped us get to where we are today. Our plea to you, is to help us get to the next phase in our journey of helping others especially all our children who rarely have a voice in issues around abuse.
We currently run with 100% volunteers and 100% community donations at this time until we can raise enough money to either become fiscally sponsored or become a 501(c)3 that will enable us to take our organization to the next level.
We are not a talk the talk organization but walk the walk every day and have a passion and commitment to create positive change and finding the solutions needed to a huge problem.
We currently have a higher demand than we are capable of currently meeting especially in our areas of research that involve the links between medical and legal issues.
