Make all hands safe.

Many of you already know the sad statistics about domestic violence:

--> 31% of women report abuse by an intimate partner at some time in their lives.
--> In the US, a woman is beaten every 15 seconds by her husband or parter.
--> Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.

So, if you are in danger, need help or do not feel safe in your home, dial 911 or call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY). Click here to quickly exit this page.

In response to the violence, the Allstate Foundation recently launched Safe Hands: The Allstate Network for Empowering Women . They hope to reduce the incidence of domestic violence by:

Direct services: Providing programming and funding support through a financial empowerment curriculum and training materials; community volunteerism by Allstate employees, agents and agency staff; and a grant program to allow service providers to address the complex, broad and often immediate range of survivors’ needs.
Thought leadership: Supporting domestic violence advocates and service providers through
national conferences and other events and cutting-edge research. The Allstate Foundation Domestic Violence Program will conduct an annual, national research poll to determine current awareness and perceptions about domestic violence in the United States. The findings of this poll, conducted among a representative sample of adults in the U.S., will be used to continue to build the program and track progress over the coming years.
Public awareness: Creating a national effort to raise public awareness and change societal attitudes about domestic violence. This component of the Program will be phased in beginning in 2006.

Here's how you can get involved:

* Send a email to yourself and your friends. For each person that clicks the purple button in the message $1 is donated to the Education and Job Training Assistance Fund of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. This is a fast and free way to help women who have survived domestic violence. Most everyone reading this can make this contribution.

* Spread the word about Safe Hands and other programs working to end domestic violence.

* Participate in the good work by donating time, money or supplies to a women's safehouse, applying for a grant to support your work against domestic violence, volunteering at a safehouse,

Join Allstate and the numerous other people and organizations around the world who are working to end domestic violence. Thanks Jessica, for the heads up on this!

"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance." - Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), German-born U.S. political philosopher.