Domestic violence project in Orange County will now be available in Spanish thanks to grant

In an effort to continue helping the Spanish-speaking community affected by domestic violence and trauma, The MEND Project will soon have a Spanish-language website and add more material, thanks to a grant by the Samueli Foundation. 

The MEND Project educates, equips, and restores individuals impacted by emotional and psychological abuse and trains professionals to respond accordingly to each case. The organization, founded in 2016, is a leader in providing proper language to identify, describe and prevent hidden forms of abuse. 

It was one of 138 organizations in Orange County selected during the summer by the Samueli Foundation’s Breakaway Fund, which provides unrestricted, easy-to-access capital to help the organizations achieve their goals.

Annette Oltmans, founder and CEO of The MEND Project, said the grant will help translate materials, courses, and a new website completely in Spanish. 

“We submitted this grant proposal because in our local area, in Orange County, mainly Santa Ana, [has] one of the highest call rates for domestic violence, and we know that it's an underserved population,” she said.

The organization provides domestic violence education for survivors and has an accredited course for therapists through the American Psychological Association. She said this is very important because many responders don't understand the complexities and the nuances of domestic violence and end up causing more harm because of their lack of education surrounding the topic.

Educating the community to identify red flags

A study by the National Library of Medicine indicates that understanding about the behaviors and impacts of subtle or covert abuse is limited, and there is a potential inability by therapists to recognize it in their clients. 

The reason is that this includes emotional abuse with confusing, manipulative behaviors and tactics that are used to exert power over and control victims in communication styles. This could include blame shifting, minimizing concerns by the victim, and flipping the situation around. 

“So we have very unique language that defines over 35 of these behaviors, and when victims see this in writing – something that they have had such a hard time explaining to their family or friends or to a therapist – they can advocate for themselves, so they can finally understand that it's not their fault,” said Oltmans. 

By delivering healing-centered, culturally responsive content in Spanish, The MEND Project will reach thousands of survivors and hundreds of Spanish-speaking professionals with tools to prevent, recognize and respond to hidden forms of emotional abuse and Double Abuse. 

The Samueli Foundation’s Breakaway Fund supports Orange County nonprofit organizations with innovative projects that strengthen capacity and increase community impact.

Oltman said they work with other organizations and have their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with over 100 blog articles that are informative and educational. 

“We work really hard to optimize those search engine searches so that we know what people are searching on the internet, like confusing marriage or painful marriage, or what is emotional abuse,” she said. “So we include them in our articles so they can find them. And once they find our articles, then there will be links within the articles that direct them to more pages of information.”

This vital information will soon be available also in Spanish. The project will take a few months to complete. Oltmans said she estimates it will be ready by the second quarter of 2026.