Sonia Gravely

Supporter Spotlight: Sonia Gravely

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How One TAP Supporter and Community Advocate Draws from Her Past to Make a Difference Today

It was 2016, and Sabrina’s Place—the only free supervised visitation and safe exchange center in the western half of Virginia—was facing closure. For Sonia Gravely, being the best version of herself means leading the charge to empower others and working toward solutions. When she saw the news, she knew she had to do something.

Taking a Personal Interest in the Matter

Supporting Sabrina’s Place is a doubly important cause for Sonia. She knew Sabrina Reed, the young woman murdered by her estranged husband during a custody exchange, for whom Sabrina’s Place is named. As a domestic violence survivor herself, Sonia considers survivors sharing their stories essential. She says it’s important that people, “can see it’s the person you see every day, your neighbor, regular people, women like myself..”

Making a Difference

When Sonia decided to support Sabrina’s Place, she knew she wanted to do something that both supported the program financially and provided a platform for people affected by domestic violence. As a member of the Missionary Ministry of Hill Street Baptist Church, she was eager to get her church involved. She created the biennial Benefit Concert hosted by Hill Street Baptist Church, which now raises several thousand dollars for Sabrina’s Place at each event and includes participation from 14 other area churches. At each event, an anonymous survivor shares his or her story as a reminder that people around us often carry unseen scars.

TAP’s Housing and Human Services Director says of Sonia, “Her passion for survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence is what drives her. She takes on planning the Benefit Concert and fills the seats to ensure that we can serve families that need us. Her heart is as big as the voices that sing! She is the kind of person you want in your corner at every event cheering—and planning!”

Being the Change You Want to See

The Benefit Concert isn’t the only way Sonia supports Sabrina’s Place. She also organizes an off-year donation drive, collecting items like toiletries, cleaning supplies, and snacks for the participants’ children. For her, the process isn’t just about doing something—it’s about becoming the kind of person you want to be.

“Knowing the domestic violence scars I have, it helped me make a different decision on who Sonia should be and where Sonia should be. It made me redirect me. That’s why I went back to school,” she says. “That’s what made me want to make mental health for women my focus. I had worked in affordable housing all my life, and that was great, but I knew I could do more.”

Does Sonia’s story sound like you or someone you know? If so, give us a call at 540-777-4673 or explore our website to find a program that inspires you and helps fulfill your vision for a better world.

Child on virtual meeting

Adapting for Now, Learning for the Future: Sabrina’s Place Visits Go Virtual

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TAP created Sabrina’s Place to facilitate face-to-face interaction while protecting participants’ physical and emotional health during custody exchanges or court-ordered child/parent visits. Now, a microscopic threat—one capable of penetrating a number of our carefully planned physical safeguards—has forced us to rethink what it means to keep people safe in our center. Because of this, Sabrina’s Place visits have gone virtual.

Safety First

TAP designed Sabrina’s Place to prevent physical and emotional harm. With its foundational focus on safety,  Sabrina’s Place has separate parking lots, different waiting areas, and off-duty Roanoke City police officers providing security. Monitors escort families through the center at all times. However, all the locked doors and security cameras in the world can’t address the threat of a respiratory virus. As the threats to our clients evolve, so too must the services we provide to mitigate those threats.

Fortunately, technology has evolved steadily since Sabrina’s Place’s founding—it’s now cheaper, more widespread, and more accessible than it was in the past (although problems with accessibility still linger). Now that Sabrina’s Place visits have gone virtual, families can access video-based services using Wi-Fi and mobile devices.

A New Set of Security Concerns

Like many others, we’re exploring virtual technologies we might not have considered before—for example, virtual visits. Despite video conferencing’s widespread use, it still carries risks and downsides. We’ve all heard the news stories of so-called “Zoombombers” or otherwise inappropriate third-party call participants hacking into online video chats. This lack of security and control makes such options a nonstarter for Sabrina’s Place: no matter the venue, we must still protect our clients’ personal information and monitor visits for signs of mental or emotional abuse.

Thankfully, platforms created to facilitate telehealth calls offer Sabrina’s Place a secure and tested medium over which to conduct visits. With a HIPPA-compliant platform, monitors can focus on making sure the content of the visits is appropriate.

The Right Fit for Some Families—Even Without the Virus

Virtual visits could turn out to be the best trauma-informed change to Sabrina’s Place’s design in years. Over the years, we have noted that some children are apprehensive about visits with non-custodial parents/guardians. This could be a great way to ease children into visits–especially those children who have experienced large gaps in visitations over time. 

Sabrina’s Place is also the only secure supervised visitation program serving the western half of Virginia—as well as large portions of surrounding states—providing services free for the families who need it. Some families drive hours to have their visits at Sabrina’s Place. The option to supplement or replace those in-person visits would ease their time and travel burden.

Lessons to Take With Us

Best practices are always evolving—and they should be! Ahead of the switch to virtual services, TAP Housing and Human Services Director talked with current and past clients.

After one client said, “I wish this had been available when I was a client, I would have much preferred video visits, especially starting out,” she knew she had to think of the switch to virtual not as a temporary measure, but as a new part of the center’s operations moving into the future.

Freedom First & Carilion Support TAP Students

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Trying to turn your life around is hard work. The students in TAP’s youth programs are doing that work every day—some of them have been doing it while fighting hunger, too.

Not a Choice, a Situation

“Some of our students don’t eat at home, not because they don’t want to eat, and not because mom doesn’t want to provide,” says Rob Wormley, mentor coordinator and recruiter for our youth programs. “But if you’ve got a bill to pay or need gas to get to work, and you provided dinner last night, sometimes you don’t have money to provide the next dinner. It’s not a choice, it’s a situation.”

Now, thanks to two recent donations from Freedom First Credit Union and Carilion, TAP students won’t be caught in that situation.

Dave Prosser from Freedom First and Sonya Charlow from Carilion were recently in a meeting where a TAP staff member shared the students’ difficulty. Both of them immediately responded to the need, asking their organizations to commit funds to help us provide healthy meals and snacks for the students so they’ll be able to focus on their work without worrying about their next meal.

“The students are trying to do better in life and learn trades,” said Sonya. “You have to be sharp in order to learn, and to be sharp you can’t be hungry. We want the students to be able to focus and have a comfort level of knowing they can have lunch or have a snack while taking on these courses and training.”

“There is certainly a need to feed the students,” echoed Dave, “and not sufficient funding at this point to address this need. Our youth and our children are our greatest asset, and we need to support them in any way we can, especially those who are coming from challenges. It’s not just an issue for TAP or the school system, but an issue for all of us stakeholders to invest in, because when our youth thrive, we all thrive as a community.”

Helping Youth Thrive

Helping all of our youth to thrive is central to TAP’s mission. The impact of these donations will help the students today to focus and improve in their classes. But, as Rob puts it, “the impact won’t happen all in one day or one month or even one year.” For the students, being able to participate in our programs and do so on a full stomach is a gift with an impact that will be realized over time as they progress and move on to successful careers. 

Get Involved

To find out how you could be a mentor, call 540-613-0048.