by Lisa Butterworth

On a recent afternoon, Michelle Cates, the executive director of Project Sister Family Services, was handed a formidable ring of keys. The gesture marked a new and auspicious chapter for the local nonprofit that supports survivors of sexual assault and child abuse. After operating for 23 years in their current location, on Wednesday, October 1 Project Sister will open the doors of its new space in Pomona, and the community is invited to help celebrate with an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The location may be new, but the organization has a deep history. It was started in Claremont by three women, two of them students at the Claremont college, in 1972, in response to a rash of local sexual assaults. (It was also the time period when a serial rapist, known as the “Pillowcase Rapist,” was assaulting women across the Southland.) “I remember very vividly sitting in a dorm room with our legs crossed on the bed, and the more we talked about rape, the angrier we got,” said Paola Hoch, one of the founding advocates. “We didn’t know what we were doing, we just wanted to help.” “They felt like they were getting no response from the universities, from local law enforcement at the time,” Cates said. So, they gathered a small group of women and formed Project S.I.S.T.E.R. (Sisters In Service To End Rape) with a single phone line at another local nonprofit’s crisis call center.

Women called in droves, and the group began to figure out ways to support them — including driving their own cars to pick up victims and take them to the local hospitals — establishing what Cates called “one of the earliest rape crisis centers in the nation.”

Project Sister has since grown, especially following the passage of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which opened up more federal funding for these kinds of support services. Now the organization has a staff of 10, including two full-time therapists, and its 24-hour crisis hotline is answered by 26 trained local volunteers, including Paola Hoch, who helped found Project Sister more than five decades ago. “It’s vitally important that that role remains as volunteers from our community, because it’s our community saying that this behavior is not acceptable and we are going to respond,” Cates said.

In addition to the rape crisis hotline, Project Sister also runs a child abuse hotline providing immediate counseling and support, any time of day or night. It also offers accompaniment services, acting as in-person advocates for victims reporting to law enforcement or undergoing forensic medical exams, as well as ongoing therapy and prevention education.

The services are sorely needed: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over half of women, and almost one in three men, experience sexual violence during their lifetimes. Last year, Project Sister served 4,555 people throughout the Eastern San Gabriel Valley and parts of San Bernardino County, with 260 people utilizing their therapeutic services, all provided with a survivor-centered approach.

“We believe that survivors deserve choice in how they heal and how they move forward,” Cates said. “Some survivors may not want to report to law enforcement, and that’s okay. We will support them with that choice. The next person might really feel that that’s their path, and we’re going to support them. It’s about empowering every person who walks through our doors to make choices that feel right for them.”

Better supporting survivors was the catalyst for the organization’s desire to find a more accessible, tailor-made location. “It was very, very important to us that we stay in Pomona and we stay centered in our community,” Cates said. Project Sister’s new space is conveniently located right across from Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center and offers more opportunities for outreach and advocacy, including a large training space where staff will provide prevention and education services, self-defense classes, and, perhaps down the line, even trauma-informed yoga sessions. The five new therapy rooms are geared to specific needs: one for young children, one for adolescents, one for crisis support, a general counseling room, and a large room for small group therapy.

The services Project Sister offers are becoming increasingly important as Trump administration budget cuts have reduced their capacity, and the future of federal funding is uncertain at best. “What’s happening right now at the federal level is unprecedented, and it has dire effects for community-based organizations,” Cates said. “But we still have a job to do. We still have people who are counting on us. And so, in the midst of that, we just have to come in every day and focus on those survivors.

It’s what the organization has been doing for more than 50 years, and the impact is immeasurable. “People have said it’s lifesaving. This work is lifesaving,” Cates said. “We’ve had folks tell us, ‘I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the services that I received.’”

Project Sister is hoping the new space will only amplify those positive experiences.

“I’m hoping that it’ll be a peaceful place for survivors to come and find healing. I’m hoping that it sparks creativity with our team and gives them outlets to do some of the things that they’ve been thinking of,” Cates said. “There’s so much excitement around this training space and what we can do in there, and all of these ideas, not just for our prevention team, but our therapy team as well. What can we bring? What are other things that we can do to really bring people in and give them this place?”

The October 1 open house will be the first step. “Allowing people to actually walk through those spaces, see them, interact with the staff, talk about the work that we do. There’ll be a little bit of food, a little bit of swag, but the most important part is really for folks to come in and see, ‘If I were to have to refer somebody here, what is their process going to be like? How does that work?’” Cates said. “It’s really a welcome because it’s always nice to come into a new space, but this space belongs to survivors and belongs to this community. We want everyone to feel welcome coming to these doors.”

Project Sister’s open house takes place from 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 1 at 1902 Royalty Dr., Pomona, CA 91767, with a ribbon cutting at 5. Visit projectsister.org for more info.