Vision & Mission

WIN’s philosophy is one of empowerment which “helps victims to help themselves.” Our mission is “To Help, Educate, Support, and Empower Victims of Abuse.” We strongly believe that with proper information and support, victims can take control of their own lives and go on to become survivors. All of the services provided by WIN operate from this philosophical base.


Our Philosophy

WIN’s philosophy of assisting victims of crime, such as sexual assault and domestic violence, is to help victims help themselves. We offer supportive listening, counseling, and education on the options available to victims. We strongly believe in the right of self-determination for all victims. We will make no decisions for the victims nor will we influence their decisions but will provide objective support for the choices victims make.

WIN assists victims by helping them to understand violence as it occurs not only in the context of their own life, but also to encourage them to explore the societal conditions and attitudes, which lead to the violence in the home, and on the streets. WIN recognizes that substance abuse may be one of any number of contributing factors in violent crimes. Therefore, we assist victims to understand the relationship between substance abuse and violence and provide education and options to victims for prevention, intervention, and treatment of substance abuse. We also encourage peer support victims for other victims through collectively sharing experiences, successes, and failures in order to break the barrier of silence and feeling of isolation.

We advocate for victims, not by speaking for them, but rather, we seek to share our knowledge of the system they are dealing with in order to enable them to act on their own behalf effectively and successfully.

We believe that in order to eliminate violence in our lives, a systematic change in the public’s attitude toward violence in the home and in the stress must occur. One of our goals is to work within our community to affect that change through public education about domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other violent crimes, and the societal attitudes and conditions which have permitted tolerance to violence in general and women in particular.