Saving Promise Launches “Don’t Just Give A Damn” Domestic Violence Awareness Campaign

By George Kevin Jordan, Special to the AFRO

L.Y. Marlow wants more than platitudes. She wants people to do more than rock a bumper sticker on the back of their Volvo or Subaru. As Domestic Violence Awareness Month is in full effect this October, the CEO and Founder of Saving Promise kicked off  “Don’t Just Give A Damn” about the issue. And she has the campaign to do it.

#dontjustgiveadamn is a video and a call to action for people to address the importance of domestic violence. The initiative calls for people to do just three things this month: Donate $1, Make a pledge writing down what you will do to stop domestic violence and share the campaign via social media.

Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States, according to data from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), pulled from the CDC’s 2010 National Intimate Partner Sexual Violence Survey. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men. Also according to NCADV 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.

In D.C. alone, 32,794 domestic violence-related calls were made to the Metropolitan Police Department in 2013, according to the NCADV. That’s approximately 1 call every 16 minutes.

Saving Promise is an organization Marlow started after coming to grips with the history of domestic violence in her family.

“Saving Promise is inspired by my family story of five generations of domestic violence in my family including my grandmother, my mother, myself and my daughter,” Marlow said in a phone interview. “And my daughter’s little girl Promise became the fifth generation as she lay on the bed next to my daughter at six months old as my daughter was strangled and almost killed for the second time.”

Located near Howard University, the organization has been around for over ten years now.

Marlow wants everyone to know that making a difference is not just about big donations. Doing something is a very individual process when it comes to domestic violence.

“Doing something could be as simple as a mother talking to her daughter about domestic violence,” Marlow said. “It could be getting a group of friends together for dinner to discuss it.”

The Don’t Just Give A Damn campaign will hopefully extend into the new year, Marlow said. For more information please go to the website at www.savingpromise.org.