WHATELY — It’s been 50 years since four women began meeting around a kitchen table in New Salem, determined to support survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
Despite taking on a new name this year, the organization that grew out of those early conversations, the Greenfield-based Resilience Center of Franklin County, remains committed to its original goals while looking to the future of advocacy.
“[The founders] wanted to support women who are in difficult situations and help them leave, and to change the cultural norm. And they did that,” Executive Director Amanda Sanderson said in an interview at the Oct. 5 anniversary celebration at Quonquont Farm. “We’ve got an intergenerational group who are here to honor what the founders and the staff and survivors did over the past five decades.”
Until May of this year, the Resilience Center of Franklin County was formerly known as the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (NELCWIT). The name change comes in an effort to be more inclusive of all people who experience domestic or sexual violence, Sanderson explained previously.
Joan Featherman, one of the collaborators who helped found the organization in 1975, recounted how the group began by forming networks of volunteers to organize education about violence against women. The organization was able to open its first office the following year because of a $100 monthly donation from a survivor of a violent marriage.
The initial outreach office was staffed by 22 volunteers who provided crisis counseling and temporary housing through a network of private homes. In 1977, the organization incorporated as a nonprofit multi-service center, and in 1979, it opened its first shelter for women and their children.
However, the group faced significant backlash.
“We faced the same misogynistic threats then that we do today,” Featherman recounted, describing receiving hate mail and death threats, and being denied funding and being subjected to sexist prejudice.
Despite this, the organization continued to grow over five decades, branching out in new ways in an effort to serve more of the community.
In 1983, NELCWIT expanded its rape crisis services, strengthening both public education efforts and its capacity to support survivors of sexual assault and incest. Under pressure from state funders, the organization shifted from a collective model to a more traditional nonprofit structure with an executive director and board of directors. Then in 1985, the staff unionized, and a co-director leadership model with shared authority between staff and the board of directors was established.
The organization faced a challenge, however, when state funders cut support for rape crisis and counseling services. NELCWIT’s co-directors, board and community allies rallied legislators to restore the funding while energizing the launch of a capital campaign. That effort raised $75,000 to establish a 20-bed shelter.
Collaboration also expanded in the 1980s, when NELCWIT created its first full-time legal/court advocate position to help survivors obtain restraining orders and develop safety plans. A collaboration with the Franklin County Bar Association in the 1990s brought volunteer attorneys to provide free legal assistance for domestic violence survivors.
Although NELCWIT grew to a point where it had outreach offices in Athol, Orange and Shelburne Falls, and was able to expand services in a variety of ways, funding setbacks came in the late 2000s. Staff numbers fell from nearly 50 in the early 2000s to about half that size by the decade’s end. In 2007, NELCWIT was forced to close its domestic violence shelter due to state funding cuts and the nonprofit moved its crisis center to 479 Main St. in Greenfield, where it continued to provide a 24-hour hotline, walk-in appointments, counseling and long-term advocacy.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic required further adaptation. Before the public health crisis began, NELCWIT had moved into a more private office at 17 Long Ave., and when in-person services were suspended, the organization adapted to provide counseling and crisis support services virtually. The nonprofit also maintains a North Quabbin office at 119 New Athol Road, Suite 110, in Orange.
Though the organization continues to evolve, the need for its services is a constant. In fact, calls for assistance are on the rise, according to Sanderson, who previously explained that the Resilience Center of Franklin County had 497 walk-in appointments last year and served more than 2,500 people from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.
“There’s definitely an uptick in need [for service],” she said in September. “We’re seeing a lot of restraining order requests and cases, and housing continues to be the No. 1 thing that people need in order to leave a domestic violence relationship or to recover from it — to move from housing instability into not just a transitional place, but a permanent place.”
Lainie DeCoursy, a board member with the Resilience Center of Franklin County, said she hopes to see more work on bolstering community resilience and violence prevention over the organization’s next 50 years.
“It would be great to eradicate the need for this kind of care,” DeCoursy said in an interview at the anniversary celebration. “We have such a strong foundation to build on, and are doing such important and impactful work in the county. … Today really is a celebration of the past and just the community that has supported this work for so long.”
Featherman concluded her remarks with a message of hope for those who are continuing the work of supporting survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
“I say to those of you who are young and able, look what we did, what worked and what didn’t,” Featherman said. “We foremothers will continue to be in the conversation [and] support you [in furthering] this movement. … Know that we will always have your backs. Figure out how to stay safe and continue to speak truth to power.”
