Virginia Anti-Violence Project

VAVP originally began as a research project in 2006, with the help of Equality Virginia, which was focused on addressing programs and services designed to provide support for lesbian and gay individuals who experienced hate crimes or violence in some form. The organization became its own entity in 2008 and has been serving LGBTQIA+ Virginians since, with no other organization like it prior to that. To this day, VAVP is the sole direct service and advocacy resource organization in Virginia that specifically works to bring awareness and combat violence against LGBTQIA+ folks. This includes preventing hate/bias motivated violence, intimate partner/sexual/dating violence, and/or stalking against and within LGBTQIA+ communities. The survivors and victims that VAVP serve often hold marginalized intersectional identities and typically don’t feel safe reaching out to mainstream service providers and/or systems. As a “for us, by us” community resource, we continue to respond to the growing number of hate/bias motivated acts of violence experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities.