Since 1994 the Task Force has operated New England's only multilingual emergency shelter & services for Asian victims of domestic violence and their children. The shelter program has served as a model for programs in Massachusetts, thoughout the U.S., and internationally. With over forty distinct Asian languages and cultures represented in the greater Boston area, linguistically and culturally accessible resources are vital to our ability to provide outreach, education, prevention, and direct services to the many families in need in Asian communities.

ATASK carries out its mission through three primary programs:

1. Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project
2. Education and Outreach
3. Lowell Asian Project Against Domestic Violence

Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project (ASAP)

The Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project (ASAP) is the first program of its kind in Massachusetts and only one of a few across the United States. ASAP provides not only safety and advocacy but also an environment where Asian women and their children feel understood and supported as they begin the healing process. ASAP's services include:

• 24-hour multilingual crisis hotline;
  
• 90-day emergency shelter;
  
• 14-day temporary safe home;
  
• Community outreach and education;
  
• Multilingual advocacy
  
• Comprehensive stabilization services for both residential and non-residential families, including housing and legal advocacy, mental health counseling, English as a Second Language tutoring and a Children's Program.

The uniqueness of our services comes from our ability to provide culturally and linguistically competent services to Asian women of diverse Asian cultures, recognizing both the specificity of each culture and the values and beliefs shared across the diverse cultures. All direct service staff are bilingual/bicultural women who help clients bridge language and cultural gaps in seeking safety and rebuilding their lives. Program staff speak several Asian languages and dialects: Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin and Toisanese), Hindi, Japanese, Khmer (Cambodian), Korean, Nepali, Urdu, and Vietnamese. A pool of volunteer translators increases our language capacity. Since its inception, ATASK has provided services, advocacy, and outreach to women from 15 different ethnic groups in 12 Asian languages.

Another unique feature of ATASK model is the comprehensiveness of the services offered to all clients, both those staying at the shelter and those staying in other shelters, in community safe homes, or with friends or relatives. In the year 2000 ATASK assisted over 250 women on a non-residential basis, providing translation, advocacy, and services for up to 12 months. ATASK's stabilization services provide long-term support to help women heal from the trauma of abuse and make the transition from crisis situations to safe, independent, violence-free lives. These services are based on a holistic approach, tackling many of the issues the women face simultaneously.

Education and Outreach

Project Safe is the community organizing, educational and prevention component of ATASK. The goal of Project Safe is to bring attention to the realities of family violence and engage community participation in preventing further abuse. Together we can begin to take a united stand for the many who have endured abused in silence.

In addition to working with the more established Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese communities, ATASK's outreach targets the underserved Korean and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc.) communities.

Highlights include:

• ATASK worked with Professor Marianne Yoshioka of Columbia University School of Social Work to produce the Asian Family Violence Report, the most comprehensive study of attitudes toward family violence in Asian communities to date.
  
• The Asian Clothesline Project, a powerful display oft-shirts decorated to represent a particular individual's experience of violence (domestic battery, incest, sexual abuse, and/or economic abuse), has gotten enormous public attention. The ATASK has collected 72 t-shirts from the community in six Asian languages and has organized displays throughout Greater Boston, Lowell and New York State.

Lowell Asian Project Against Domestic Violence

The Lowell Project is a satellite program of ATASK in Lowell, the home of the second largest Cambodian community in the U.S. Created in collaboration with the Southeast Asian Families Against Domestic Violence, a coalition of Lowell Asian leaders, community organizations, and concerned individuals.

The project is designed to serve and organize the Cambodian community around the issue of domestic violence.

The project integrates direct services with prevention, outreach, community and mainstream education strategies.