With the renovation of West Jordan City Hall, the offices of South Valley Services got a major upgrade too which could help thousands more affected by domestic violence. The center officially reopened the doors on May 1 with an official ribbon cutting ceremony.

While South Valley Services was in the city hall before renovation, Mayor Dirk Burton said the space was “extremely small and tight.” 

“You had to go into the main front door and they had these two little-tiny rooms—you had two people in there and it was full,” Burton said.

The renovation was a perfect time to create a new, bigger office space for the nonprofit with a separate entrance and several more rooms, including a dedicated conference space for group meetings and two clinical service rooms. 

“They have elbow room,” Burton said. “The services they do for our community is beyond measure.”

Josie White, SVS Development Director, said the new, bigger center in West Jordan and the community support will make a big difference in the amount of people the organization can help.

“This center is the difference between serving a few hundred survivors in our shelter versus thousands of survivors each year,” White said. “Domestic violence is something that affects us all and it’s also something that will only be resolved with the support of our community.”

Nearly one third of Utah women and one fourth of Utah men have or will experience domestic violence, according to statistics gathered by SVS. 

SVS is a nonprofit that specializes in supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence—men, women and children alike—by offering shelter, education and counseling.

“Historically, shelter programs like South Valley Services, have been just known as just shelters like a women’s and children's shelter only,” said Lindsey Boyer, SVS executive director. “The beauty of having an office space like this is it allows us to further our reach and still support people after they’ve had a need for a shelter.”

Boyer said with the new space, staff will now be able to provide clinical services and community meetings, like support groups and financial classes, that they weren’t able to before. 

The partnership with the city and police department is just two of the partnerships that Boyer thanked for the new building, along with SVS partners with Rape Recovery Center and Bikers Against Child Abuse, both represented at the reopening. 

“I think what’s important is just letting the community know that we exist and that we’re here,” said Moana Thompson, advocacy director of Rape Recovery Center’s Salt Lake and Toole offices. “We can collaborate with one another and contact each other so that nobody gets missed.” 

“It takes all of us to make this work,” Boyer said. 

SVS also provides education across the valley and offers classes about financial well-being, teen dating, tech safety for survivors and preventing domestic violence, in and out of the program’s centers, SVS Programs Director Newton Gborway told the City Journals.

Gborway said most of the organization’s centers are in a public building such as West Jordan’s city hall, public libraries and community-based centers to make it accessible to a wide range of people seeking help.

“The client is already traumatized—some of them don’t have transportation, they don’t have money—so to book an appointment for them to come to West Jordan from Magna is too far,” said Gborway, “so we get something closer.” 

The organization is hosting a community breakfast fundraiser on May 23 from 8 to 9 a.m. with keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author, Janine Latus to raise awareness and funds to fight against domestic abuse. More information and tickets can be found at svsutah.org.