OAKLAND — The Dove Center has been named a recipient of a Theresa’s Fund 2021 Purple Ribbon Award in the category of Program/Shelter of the Year.
Winners are chosen across 28 categories, as judged by a national panel of respected professionals from the domestic violence field.
The Purple Ribbon Awards are the first comprehensive awards program honoring the heroes of the domestic violence movement, including advocates, programs, shelters, survivors and members of the community support system. Winners include entries from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Winning entries received a certificate signed by Theresa’s Fund founder Preston V. McMurry Jr. and an official Purple Ribbon Award medallion that combines a purple ribbon and custom circular gold medal engraved with the winner’s category.
All other entries received an honoree certificate “because everyone’s heroic efforts to help victims of domestic violence deserve acknowledgment and applause.”
The Dove Center, Garrett County’s comprehensive domestic and sexual violence program, received the award for Program/Shelter of the Year in recognition of its innovative, resilient expansion of programs, including the new Transitional Housing units, pet sheltering program, trauma informed educational efforts, school and campus counseling program, JEWELS group, and more.
Each entry was scored by three judges and each judge scored each entry on a 1-25 scale across four factors: Challenge & Impact (the scope of the challenge faced and overcome), Creativity & Originality (the inventiveness of the nominee in their endeavor), Submission Excellence (the caliber of the materials accompanying the entry) and Overall (the overall performance of the entry relative to other entries).
The scores for an entry were averaged and up to the three highest scores in a given category received a Purple Ribbon Award.
To ensure parity, entries were classified into one of three groups based on the size of a nominee’s organization: Less than $500,000, Between $500,001 and $2,000,000 and Greater than $2,000,000, and entries were judged within the size classification within each category.
In other words, there were three separate competitions within each category to provide organizations the opportunity to be reviewed among their peers.
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