Welcome to one of our newest employees, Claudia De la Cruz!
Claudia started working with Nazareth Housing during our 2023 tax season and transitioned into the role of Domestic Violence Empowerment Advocate soon after that. Claudia’s expertise is a meaningful addition to the services we already provide to survivors.
Claudia not only has a background in advocacy work, especially with domestic violence survivors, she is well versed in appropriate support techniques because she is a survivor herself. Her approach to advocacy and wellness is based on holistic self-care practices; she is a certified Reiki healing master and is an exceptional listener to those who are coming from a place of trauma.
In addition to serving clients, Claudia plans to organize training for our staff to increase awareness about domestic and gender-based violence: how it can present, how to listen to survivors, how to help survivors create self-care plans and how to help them feel safe. She believes that staff would also benefit from training on trauma-informed practices and strategies for self-care because the work we do can be emotionally overwhelming and to be able to best serve our clients, we also need to feel strong.