Memo On Volunteer Work At Middle Way House In Indiana

Description of the Organization's History and Achievements

Middle Way House, a non-profit organization, providing many services for battered women, has strived to end violence and sexual assault for battered women and their children in South Central Indiana for over 30 years. On the Middle Way House Website an in depth history can be found. Some of the highlights are as follows: In 1971 Middle Way House incorporated to provide crisis intervention services to people in Bloomington. For the next ten years, the agency operated as a volunteer organization, responding to needs in the community as they arose. Middle Way provided peer counseling to people abusing drugs and alcohol, operated a venereal disease clinic, and answered the phone 24-hours a day to provide a listening ear to people who were lonely, anxious, frightened, or in need of information and referral services. In 1981, following the arrival in Bloomington of Planned Parenthood and the South Central Community Mental Health Center (now the Center on Behavioral Health), Middle Way refined its focus, selecting as its target population abused women and children. In addition to the 24-hour crisis line, the agency began to define a set of appropriate responses to this population. Middle Way first opened a domestic violence shelter, providing, in addition to safe housing, case management and facilitated in-house peer support groups for women and children from a six-county area in south central Indiana. In 1984 Middle Way started support groups for Monroe County women not living in the shelter but coping with the aftermath of intimate partner violence. In 1988, at the request of the city, Middle Way opened a Rape Crisis Center and later in the year established a Legal Advocacy Program. In 1990, Middle Way initiated the formation of the Monroe County Domestic Violence Task Force, a group consisting of representatives from law enforcement, the courts, prosecutor's office, victim advocacy and services, corrections and probation, City government, and health and psychological services. In 1995 Middle Way became a Community Housing Development Organization. In the year 1997 Middle Way began its first business, Confidential Document Destruction, to provide training in marketable skills as well as living wage jobs with benefits and appropriate supports to women entering the job market after leaving abusive relationships. After much planning, organizing and community support, Middle Way also began construction of transitional housing, soon to be called The Rise! for battered women and their children as part of its commitment to the provision of a continuum of housing for this population, and we acquired low-cost, third stage housing for our target population. In 1998 The Rise! began receiving families into its 28-unit