Taking Back Our Lives

Taking Back Our Lives is a community based organization that focuses its work on ending violence against women and children. We believe that the most effective way to end this violence is through empowering women and youth with a grass roots, social justice model that enables participants to become leaders in their own communities. Taking Back Our Lives’ primary project is Take Back the Halls. Take Back the Halls is a collaboration between TBOL and the Beck Research Initiative for Women, Gender, and community at DePaul University. Through a program melding academic resources and rigor with community engagement and activism, TBTH is able to offer Chicago teens a vibrant collaborative learning environment. Take Back the Halls is a teen dating violence prevention and community activism program designed to empower teens to become community leaders and active participants in the movement to end violence. TBTH gives participants the opportunity to examine issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual abuse, as well as the variety of social structures that support violence in our culture. It creates a space for students to talk about issues affecting their lives, to generate ways to raise public awareness, to speak out against violence, and to advocate for change in their schools and communities. Taking Back Our Lives is a 501(c)(3) publicly supported organization.