A recent grant from Inland Empire Community Foundation through the Seraphim Fund will help a local nonprofit strengthen its efforts to promote safe futures for children, youth, and families whose lives have been affected by violence.
Riverside County’s SAFE Family Justice Centers will direct those resources to the nonprofit’s adult support programs.
“The reason that we focused on our adult support programs is so that survivors of violence have long-term support systems in place,” said Marshall Hamilton, Executive Director of SAFE Family Justice Centers. “Our goal as a family justice center has always been to provide long-term care for survivors should they opt into that. We’ve also done a really great job with our youth programs, but funding has been limited for our adult survivors.”
To that end, the grant will allow the nonprofit to work with one of its partners to offer equestrian-based healing programs with survivors. It will also allow the organization to buy supplies and run its domestic violence education classes and aftercare support group.
Those classes and support groups are impactful.
The nonprofit offers a 10-week Domestic Violence Education course that provides education and safety planning information for victims of domestic violence. Some of the key topics covered include: understanding intimate partner violence; unique safety planning and barriers to leaving an abusive relationship; the impact of domestic violence on children and families; and understanding the civil and criminal justice system in relation to domestic violence.
The nonprofit’s Women’s After-Care Education Groups also stands out. This program for trauma survivors features a women’s circle support group where individuals can share, explore, enhance various skills, and encourage one another to live authentically in “mind, body, heart, and spirit.”
Elsewhere, the Parent Project is deigned to empower parents and transform the lives of teens. This includes such things as learning to sidestep repeated arguments with one’s child, preventing or intervening in alcohol or drug use, improving school attendance and performance, and discovering result-driven solutions for media issues.
“Regarding victims of crime survivors, oftentimes people say that it’s a perception issue—people are either in denial about their victimization and or want to move past that,” Hamilton said. “A lot of times our services are seen as very crisis-based. But realistically, why try to provide peer-based support so that if anybody has a problem today or in five years, they still have the same network of support, and they only have to tell their story once.”
The evolution of the nonprofit is interesting to note.
SAFE Alternatives for Everyone (S.A.F.E.) emerged back in 1998 in a grassroots effort by the Temecula Valley Womans Club. Led by Founder Carol Niles, the organization stood as a response to the growing needs of domestic violence victims in the community.
Through the years, it evolved into a successful entity eager to provide services for children, youth, and families who experienced or were at risk of abuse and violence in Southwest Riverside County.
By 2004, S.A.F.E. was offering trauma-informed assistance to victims in need. At that time, it became a founding member and partner of the Family Justice Center movement in Riverside County.
Another leap occurred in 2019, when S.A.F.E. expanded its adult and youth services and merged with the Riverside County Family Justice Centers, becoming SAFE Family Justice Centers. Its mission to provide services that help protect families and promote “safe” futures for children and families affected by violence grew from there.
Hamilton has been with the nonprofit for about a year.
“I love the fluid nature of the organization,” he said. “Our agency has been around 28 years, and it’s evolved with the survivors in the community. We really try to meet the needs, meeting survivors where they are. Sometimes that means what some people would call ‘random programming,’ but ultimately, we’re trying to solicit feedback from survivors and make key changes immediate.”
“We want to make sure that the people interacting with our network of care get the immediate things they’re looking for,” he added.
Learn more at https://www.safefjc.org/
This story originally appeared in the Press Enterprise, October 2025.
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