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January 2024 • 4th Edition

Happy New Year, Illinois Service Providers! Here at ICADV, the internal DEI Committee wants to extend their best wishes and hopes you all had a safe, happy, and restful end of your year. As we look forward to 2024, what are you most excited for? In 2024, I am most excited for the hope of peace, justice, and as always, an end to violence.

As ICADV has grown, we are endlessly proud of all the work we do. And we want to take just a moment here to highlight how much the Peer Connections groups have grown. What started as a way to engage with other program staff during the pandemic turned into a safe space for like-titled and like-minded individuals to come together to brainstorm, network, and even vent! ICADV now has twelve of these groups - nine of which center around a person’s title, but three of which revolve around part of a person’s identity.

In June of 2023, we introduced two new Peer Connections groups: one on BIPOC Staff and one on LGBTQIA+ Staff. Through feedback, we learned the glaring importance of these spaces. BIPOC Staff were able to come together in a curated space created solely for them. LGBTQIA+ Staff were able to divulge how it feels to work with clients who have expressed homophobia. These are struggles other advocates (white and straight/cisgender, respectively) simply do not understand, therefore making these spaces even more special. These spaces are being rebranded as Peer Affinity Groups. ICADV is committed to understanding and ending the root causes of violence.

This month, we are rolling out a space for Men in the Movement, for staff who identify as male or present more masculinely to come together and discuss how it feels to operate as and be perceived as male in spaces with predominantly woman-identified survivors.

We hope that these spaces continue to grow, and we hope you will continue to join us, give us your feedback, and above all, learn with us as we grow and understand what intersectionality means to the domestic violence world. 

In peace,



The ICADV DEI Committee

Additionally, over the course of these first two months of the calendar year, we honor the following days:

Words and language are some of the most powerful connections and communication tools humans have. Learning to be more thoughtful and conscientious of the language we use in our daily lives is imperative to being effective communicators. As ICADV members, we add a layer of responsibility with the words we choose to use as we work with those who are, or have been, experiencing trauma. What we say can hurt or retraumatize another.

Highlighted Issue: It is fact that no human is without bias. Cultural, environmental, and family dynamics can, even if unintentionally, birth biases from a million angles. A bias that many deny is racism. Whether covert or overt, the denial of individual racism is a detrimental issue. Of course, no one wants to look at themselves and say, "I am racist" or "What I just thought or spoke was racist." Being prejudiced towards a person’s race can happen deliberately or even be an unconscious act.

Here are some of the ways racisms sneaks into our language:

Many, if not all of us, have heard or said one of the above very common phrases. These can even bleed into other biases, like saying “I’m not a homophobic, I have gay friends.” It is innate for humans to want to relate to others. However, in doing so, we can oppress others and deny their struggles. When we do not take the time to look inwardly at our internal biases, we miss an opportunity to learn about them, address them, and grow out of them. Let’s begin to really think about where we are coming from when we are trying to find common ground, or when we make light of an issue that is not personal to us. Racism can rear its head in many ways. One simple way to start eliminating it is by simply being mindful of our own words.

Last month, I (Oyindamola Olawepo) had the amazing opportunity to Interview with staff at KAN-WIN, a domestic violence organization based in Chicago that is dedicated to eradicating gender-based violence through comprehensive, survivor-centered services, education, and outreach to Asian American communities and beyond. As the two sat down, they introduced themselves and we learned that Ji Hye Kim came into KAN-WIN as a volunteer in 2009 and felt very at home at the organization from day one when she recognized what a needed work this is. Seeing as she has always been interested in Social Justice work, she liked the confluence of working in immigration, gender, violence all come together and seeing fellow immigrant women come together to empower one another. She was ready to throw herself completely in the work and stuck around. 

She went from volunteer to legal advocate for KAN-WIN since she already had a background in legal advocacy. From there, she became Associate Director. After having her second child, just before the pandemic in 2020, she became the Executive Director after being announced as the Interim Executive Director at the 30^th anniversary of KAN-WIN.

Me: That is amazing work to become an Executive Director just a bit before quarantine, that must have been a huge leap to get it all put together. How did that work - being a new Executive Director just before the lockdown? How did KAN-WIN work to make up for the big adjustment?

Ji Hye: It was tough, and different, we saw it coming and were preparing for it to ensure that we serve our survivors rightly. We accredit that to our crisis intervention experience, we quickly put in motion getting all of our materials and emergency contacts together to be ready to cater to our clients, made available ways to communicate and got Safety Planning training in to get us prepared to be up and running and available. We worked to be as prepared as possible, but we were unprepared for the skyrocketing needs of survivors. We got calls from new and old survivors alike whom the lockdown started to take a toll on, mostly from being couped up with the people that cause harm and all the emotions and the toll the lockdown took on survivors, which increased the service demand greatly. We are so glad the pandemic is over. 

Me: Thank you for what you do, what you’re doing and what you will still do. I know that KAN-WIN is one of the two organizations you find when you google services for Korean Survivors. Are there other organizations in the Unites States that cater to the same cultural orientation?

Ji Hye: KAN-WIN was born out of the Korean immigrant community in Chicago and the name was changed to Korean American Women in Need to KAN-WIN because more and more Asian immigrants were calling because of the cultural and linguistic needs and the need for more inclusivity arose and people keep asking for its meaning. Also, there is a more Korean Specific organization in New York and in Los Angeles and that is pretty much all. Unfortunately, most culturally specific services are saturated on the East and West Coast of the United States. In the Midwest, outside of Illinois, there are not that many.

Me: How much partnership with the other organizations do you do, or is KAN-WIN more independent in their dealings?

Ji Hye: We work very closely with Apna Ghar in many different ways - we host many different trainings together and are part of the immigrant justice initiative together. We work closely with as many organizations as possible to cater to the needs of our survivors. We are currently collaborating on a case with Monsoon United Asian Women of Iowa, and many different organizations. This is due in part to the fact that survivors need as much help as possible in the areas of cultural and linguistic expertise to be able to work through their issues.

Me: KAN-WIN does so much for survivors and their communities. As an immigrant myself, I know that it is hard to get disclosure from immigrants because of the cloud that shrouds immigration and everything in-between. Essentially, the question here is how does catering to immigrants impact your work as an organization?

Ji Hye: Our community engagement endeavor is strong because without it, people will not come. There are so many barriers to any survivor picking up the phone to seek help but there are multiple layers attached to that for our community. Some of the barriers include language, lack of knowledge of the system, coming from countries where Social Service was not active, Charity Organizations are not well known. One of the biggest barriers is not knowing what domestic violence is or how to identify it. Even as someone who went through all American education, it took me until after 40-hour training to start identifying what Domestic Violence is and how it played out in my own life. Mostly because it is so normalized and swept under the carpet along with the hardships of immigrant life. The education for DV in these communities needs to be culturally resonant and linguistically accessible. Our multilingual advocates go into different communities and conduct faith-based as well as peer to peer education. For October 2023 DVAM, we conducted our peer advocate leadership training in Korean, Chinese, Mongolian and Mandarin, and over 30 people graduated and reached out to their peers to deliver the materials that they learned, the total graduate number is about 50. They have continued to be leaders and have connected us to their places of worship and their social groups, this is forming a social web of trust building and that makes a huge difference in reaching the underserved and underreached. It also helps in breaking down the cultural norms and taboos surrounding violence, so people are more ready to support survivors.

Me: Is there anything the Coalition or other DV programs can do to bridge the gap in the conversation on cultural barriers to help survivors?

Ji Hye: We are constantly learning as well, and we don’t want to generalize on culture (laughs) and the use of listening sessions and focus groups has been helpful for us to learn about what barriers and needs are in the community. It also helps us learn how they take in information, their communications channels (example: many in the Korean community uses KaKao Talk, some in the Chinese community uses WeChat, the Mongolian community uses Facebook), people get information in different ways and understanding that helps a lot. Tabling does not work for us; it works to meet the general population but not as much when it comes to the underreached and underserved - they mostly don’t come there because it is in English. Since we are working to reach the majorly isolated individuals, we put effort in doing a lot of community engagement cause without that, people do not know of us and the services we provide. I would say that constant learning and constant reaching out whenever we can. We sometimes do our own survey and this year we went to different Asian markets and passed out over a hundred surveys around to ask people how they understand domestic violence and we are having a college institution analyze the date. Another thing is that, when survivors come, to be able to deal with issues holistically because clients in the immigrant communities have more needs than just housing (some don’t have SSN or employment or any credit history, some have issues within the small communities, they have just themselves and the program) to the point where we are listed as emergency contact for some of our survivors.

(cont.) That being said, programs need to be holistic in their approach as there is no one size fit all for every survivor. We provide services such as legal, advocacy, housing, case management, school advocacy (because many cannot communicate with their children’s schools), we also partner with Asian speaking therapist for mental health to provide professional counseling.

Me: Going back to something you said earlier… You mentioned the name change was born out of the start to cater to more than just the Korean Community - do you think that change has born more challenges?

Ji Hye: The name change was definitely needed because we had people calling the hotline saying, “I’m not Korean, can you help me?” and because we do not want people to think that we are exclusive, we changed the name. In the next couple of years, we may change it again to something more clear because people keep asking what KAN-WIN stands for and we want to take away the confusion for those that do not know us well enough. In the effort to do that, we have increased our grassroots engagement this year and have had our hotline number significantly increased. There has been a direct link between our linguistically accessible community engagement and the public’s knowledge that help is available - which has kept our direct services advocates very busy. It goes on to say that we all need more advocates and programs that can provide multilingual services, because most of the clients that come in have specific needs that require more advocates in those spaces.

Me: You have been with KANWIN for 11 years, what would you say you are most proud of from KAN-WIN in all that time?

Ji Hye: The fierceness I felt from advocates at KAN-WIN on my very first day at the organization has continued as an organizational culture. The strength in the advocates and survivors to see how powerful they can be individually as well as in a group is what I am most proud of. I see clients come back to be volunteers and even advocates and supporters. I have witnessed the healing journey, being here this long and I am most proud of it.

Me: That fierceness is important in this work as the rock for the survivors, the organization, as well as your own self too. On that note, the most logical question to come next is, what do you do or what does KAN-WIN do for self-care?

Ji Hye: I watch a lot of Netflix - ever since I started this work, I cannot watch anything serious. I watch the silliest things or most mind numbing stuff. After the pandemic, we intentionally started putting in time for trust building exercises with each other and just enjoying time with each other. Every other month, we have a staff luncheon and each team has outings. We try to have quiet Fridays where we mostly answer hotlines and take it to be self-care and organizational development. We also do this for the last week of the year. It is also time for reflections as well. We put in different things to encourage self-care and community-care, but recently, cases are getting harder and harder, thanks to gun violence, and so we are going to keep the effort going for more helpful ways to prevent burn-out.

Me: What sort of policy work does KAN-WIN do?

Ji Hye: That is an area we want to do more. Historically, we have not, but in recent years we have partnered with organizations to push for policy changes, agencies like the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum on Reproductive Justice Issues. We are working with Asian American Advancing Justice Chicago to enhance language access for immigrants, so we get pulled into different sphere because of our intersectionality, immigrant justice, gender justice, reproductive justice, racial equity, etc. We work with various organizations, especially around immigration policies to make changes for survivors.

Me: If there are policies you could wish for to be passed, what would be the top ones?

Ji Hye: There are so many (laughs). Simple things like increasing the number of U Visas available will be very helpful, plus ensuring reproductive justice and especially advocating against gun violence. These are things that directly impact the lives of survivors.

Me: Do you feel that KAN-WIN is sometimes perceived as too culturally based and does that affect interactions with other organizations and bodies?

Ji Hye: We do see that especially with survivors not getting services where they should be getting services or being put on waitlist or not getting called back because another organizations is not ready or does not have the bandwidth to help them. But as an organization, we overcome many barriers and there is more recognition for the culturally specific outreach. The community can do more to support, mostly because resources and attention tends to go to bigger organizations and people just don’t know how difficult it is to reach the isolated and marginalized communities and individuals. I believe because we are intersectional, when things happen across the globe, we are also hit with the repercussions of that as well.

We wrapped up the conversation with Ji Hye talking to me about how little people know about Asian-American history and when it is, its heavily gendered. There is another lens to how it impacts Asian-American women and gender non-binaries here in the US. That was the reason KAN-WIN developed an incredible the timeline on Asian Americans and Gender-Based Violence. It really helps ground the education and perspectives in a way that resonates with survivors, especially Asian-American youth who are growing up in the United States having to deal with multiple identities and intersections. Ji Hye stated:

After the Atlanta shooting in 2021, we’ve participated in many different circles for healing and Asian-American girls and gender non-binary were pouring out stories of how they felt with regards to discrimination, bias, prejudice and so on, which is so much and to put it into the context of American history and systemic things that have perpetrated some events really has been helpful for our community.

Check out their website here to learn more about the incredible services they provide! And don’t forget to look at the timeline, sign up for the mailing list, and reach out if you have opportunities for connection.

Upcoming Trainings on the intersection of GBV and DEI:

DEI is a continuous journey. It involves not only learning, changing, and discussing, but also taking action within ourselves and our communities. It is common to wonder “how do we do more?” when first beginning DEI work. There is no one answer or path. To help begin your movement, each month “Call to Action/Carry it Forward” will give you some suggested steps, gathered from various resources, that you can take.

DEI doesn’t have to be just another one of those meetings and trainings we have - you know, the ones where you take a deep breath and force yourself to listen. Navigating DEI and learning about the ways we can be more inclusive benefits the communities we work in as well as the underrepresented survivors we work with.

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