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From September 10 – 11, more than 400 people from across the country gathered for A CALL TO MEN’s national conference: Advancing Sports Culture to Prevent Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

On Monday, March 30, Joyful Heart held our first TALK event on the East Coast in the Washington, D.C. area at the beautiful home of Jaime and Andrew Schwartzberg.

Members of the Joyful Heart team, including our Founder & President, Mariska Hargitay, were proud to be in Detroit to celebrate the city's progress to end its rape kit backlog and speak to the work that is yet to come.

On Wednesday, we joined Vice President Biden on his trip to visit the headquarters of the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH) in Austin, Texas and commemorate National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Following the success of our February Los Angeles event with LANVIN, Joyful Heart and the couture fashion house partnered again in July for an event in the Hamptons.

On March 13, 2013, Joyful Heart joined our partners in Washington D.C. for the public launch of NO MORE, the nation’s first unifying awareness symbol to end domestic violence and sexual assault. It was an electrifying and historic day, bringing crucial discussion and unprecedented light to our issues. NO MORE Day of Action came on the heels of the President’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, 400 days after the bill’s expiration and subsequent debate in Congress. For members of the field who work with these issues, the timing of the day underscored the necessity to come together as a united front to say NO MORE to bystanding, silence and violence against women and children.

Joyful Heart’s Healing & Wellness team had the pleasure of traveling to Washington, D.C. to attend the Second World Conference of Women’s Shelters. The historic gathering brought approximately 1,500 advocates from 96 countries to the United States.

On May 20, 2010, Mariska testified before the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on the backlog of untested rape kits in this country.

On November 8, 2001, Amy Homan McGee, a mother of two, was shot to death by her husband in their home in Pennsylvania. The murder was the final act of violence in a history of cruelty and abuse. She was thirty-three years old.