Training the body and mind is the best self defense
By Joel Meyers
Adine Gonzalez founded Dauntlez several years ago, receiving her formal 501c3 nonprofit status in 2019 to help other women and teens “not be a victim!” She realized through her own Judo training (she’s a 3rd Dan Judo Black Belt) and life experiences that being assaulted causes more mental damage than physical - in fact 80% of the harm is mental. Adine knows because she has been assaulted herself and has suffered the consequences.
Self Defense Strategy Workshops
Dauntlez is an organization that offers workshops and classes to teach self-defense strategies (mostly to women and teens). In 2019 Adine and several other instructors held 12 classes that served more than 300 participants. The ultimate goal is to ensure each participant knows how to prevent, resist and defend themselves against physical assault. The mental dimension is very important too; students are trained to understand and have awareness of their surroundings, their boundaries, and their limits, and to put physical defense tactics into play if any of these are breached. Adine firmly believes that “the best defense is mental preparedness.”
Common issues for non-profits
Realizing her new organization needed a website, Adine built one herself. Yet without proper design training and web coding experience, she knew she needed help to bring her site to her desired level of professionalism. Having a more polished website could help Dauntlez market their classes, mission and vision, attract more donors, and ultimately serve more classes (their goal is to exceed 1,000 participants for 2020).
User Experience Design Volunteers
Democracylab's recent Hacky New Year hackathon on January 11th, Adine's pitch attracted 8 volunteers, consisting of designers and user experience specialists. They focused on improving the presentation of content, optimizing user journeys through the site, and refining the graphics and functions. The resulting, new beta site can even take online registrations! They accomplished a lot.Adine was so pleased that she is now looking forward to the next hackathon, which will be held on 3/14/20 online & easily accessible using Qiqo chat (which is a reliable user friendly interface that runs on Zoom Meetings). If you're interested in volunteering at any upcoming Hackathon RSVP on eventbrite to stay in touch. Adine plans to, next time, enlist a team to help her understand and implement methods for gathering data on participant demographics and attendance. She would like to understand if and why each country is different and gather statistics to show--with data--trends among assaults across the region? With this data, she can further tune her workshops and appeal to donors, and perhaps other organizations to support and expand her mission.
If you’d like to find out more about Dauntlez and lend a hand, reach out on DemocracyLab! They are especially excited to hear from you if you have UX design or front-end web development talents; join us online at St. Hacktricks Day to bring your skills!