Safety and Healing in Networks of Equity (SHINE)

Safety and Healing in Networks of Equity (SHINE) is a California project stewarded by Prevention Institute in partnership with four culturally rooted collaboratives. From April 2024 through December 2025, SHINE advances community-driven strategies to promote safe relationships, build equitable conditions for safety and healing, and prevent domestic violence (DV). This work strengthens collaborative action at the local and state levels, with a focus on upstream root cause solutions, community power building, and policy and systems change. SHINE builds on the foundational work of a past project, Safety Through Connection which took place from November 2018 to March 2024).  

We coordinate and support collaborative action through facilitation of a Learning to Action Community, individualized coaching, in-person convenings, and shared reflection and planning. We lead state-level policy and systems change advocacy; coordinate project evaluation; amplify community narratives; and advance sustainability planning to support continued operation and expansion of the work. By aligning local organizing, collective learning, and state-level engagement, SHINE strengthens community power and advances policies, systems, and resources to advance health equity and prevent DV. 

At the local level, collaboratives build community capacity and leadership; strengthen prevention ecosystems; and advocate for housing and economic justice, holistic youth and family support, and community-based intergenerational healing. Through prevention and healing programs and community organizing efforts, collaboratives work to shift cultural norms and narratives and expand equitable access to community conditions that support safety and healing. 

Primary activities:

• Coordinating and supporting four local multisector collaboratives to implement systems-change strategies that promote safe relationships, health equity, and the prevention of DV.

• Providing capacity-building support, including individual coaching, collective learning, and an in-person Learning Community convening with training, peer sharing, and planning.

• Coordinating collaborative participation in state-level policy and systems change activities, including ENACT Day and engagement with statewide coalitions to advance health equity and prevent DV.

• Coordinating evaluation activities, including a retrospective learning evaluation (2019–2024) and development of a shared project framework to guide ongoing work.

• Developing and disseminating communications products to broadcast findings and narratives to funders and the broader health equity, intersectional justice, and domestic violence fields.

• Establishing and advancing a sustainability plan to support continued operation and expansion in preventing DV.