Felix Guzman

Hello everyone, my name is Felix Guzman. I am a poet, community organizer, and advocate based out of Brooklyn, New York City, New York. I have created this GoFundMe to raise money for travel, lodging, and the registration for myself to attend the National Conference on Domestic Violence taking place on October 27th-29th in Kansas City, Missouri. It is my intention to attend this conference to obtain much-needed information on resources available nationwide and internationally to support men and boys experiencing Intimate Partner Violence and/or Domestic Violence. I myself am a multiple survivor of abusive relationships, which is why some years back I registered a sole proprietorship called Men Can Be Abused, which I aim to formalize as a nonprofit, hopefully by the end of this year. As you might be aware, October is Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. As mentioned above, as a survivor myself, this is a cause that is very near to me, being someone who has gone through the gamut of abusive interactions with significant others in the past. I am very much wanting to go ahead and create the necessary change to honor male survivors of Domestic Violence and/or Intimate Partner Violence who are currently or in the past having had experience with such. It is my intention that Men Can Be Abused will provide advocacy, create accountability, provide housing assistance, and uphold safety for impacted men and boys. I believe that transformative justice and restorative justice practices would provide optimal outcomes to bring people who have caused harm or are causing harm into healthy ways of being. Right now, the conference’s regular cost of registration is about $1000. I will be outreaching the National Domestic Violence Hotline to see if there might be a possible discount available, as I tried previously this week to inquire but a communication breakdown happened. I would love to be able to afford to have an Airbnb in place as it is too costly for hotel accommodations at this time, and I’d like to have spending cash for food and rideshare travel between the Airbnb, the conference location, and also to and from the airports here in New York City and there in Kansas City, Missouri. I would love to raise $2000 if possible; any monies beyond such would be welcome and applied in good faith to fund peer support service initiatives. I realize that life is hard for a lot of people right now and finances might be tight. If you are not able to support directly financially but would like to support, you can. Please do share this GoFundMe link as you wish at your leisure across your networks and yeah, let’s go ahead and try to help me make this conference. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to register late as it’s worth a try, and should it not be possible to attend, I’ll go ahead and refund the monies raised. With that being said, thank you for watching this video and for your time. I greatly appreciate everyone watching this video and everyone committed to creating more healthy ways of being for everyone out there. ********** An estimated breakdown of how all monies will be spent: $200 Food costs (microwaveable meals ordered via Amazon to be delivered before arrival and reasonable meals to be had while in the area) $400 Rideshare costs between Airbnb and airport (Lyft, Uber, etc) $300 Airbnb costs for 4 day stay $800 Airfare (flight from Albany NY to Kansas City, MO and return flight from KC, MO to NYC) $999 Regular Conference Registration Cost $60 Individual Membership cost to join National Domestic Violence Hotline $112 marketing collateral (business cards) $129 Zoom webinar fee for Oct 30th webinar