Moving to Connect: The Dynamics of Consent and Contact

Moving Rasa is the proud recipient of the American Rescue Plan SUPPORT FOR SURVIVORS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT FROM CULTURALLY SPECIFIC POPULATIONS GRANT PROGRAM

On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP), a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill designed to speed up America’s recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the passage of this bill, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) program received a historic increase in supplemental funding for domestic violence shelters, supportive services, tribes, sexual assault programs, and culturally specific programs.

In support of sexual assault (SA) and domestic violence (DV) survivors, this funding provides a total of $49.5 million for the FVPSA program to support culturally specific services. The Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV) along with our colleagues — Esperanza United, the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community/UJIMA, Inc., the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Inc. (NIWRC), and the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center (AKNWRC) — will utilize our expertise, networks, and resources  to provide technical assistance and support to local, community-based culturally specific programs that serve survivors from our respective cultural communities.

The Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV) was awarded $13.2 million to distribute to up to 40 sub-awards addressing DV and/or SA. Moving Rasa is a proud recipient of one of these sub-awards!

According to leading research one in six men have experienced SA, yet because of toxic masculinity, there is a dearth of supportive services for men. Southeast Asian Americans are overlooked for services because resources for Asian Americans tend to go to East Asian diasporas. In this project, Moving Rasa will focus on Southeast Asian American men to mine self-determined culturally appropriate beliefs of masculinity that connect and heal men in community.

“Moving to Connect: The Dynamics of Consent and Contact,” is a new project to work with Southeast Asian American men who are survivors of sexual assault(SA). Together with community partners and experts in the field of somatics, trauma-informed movement practices and Southeast Asian American cultural experience we will find ways to restore wholeness to their experience of their bodies, movement and contact to themselves and each other. Moving Rasa is uniquely positioned for this work because it interdigitates Western somatic and improvisational approaches to ways of knowing from Austeronesia (Southeast Asia).