Launching IDVRM in Action: Evidence-Based and Culturally Resonant Solutions to Domestic Violence

Launching IDVRM in Action: Evidence-Based and Culturally Resonant Solutions to Domestic Violence 

We are fundraising to support the launch of the Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion & Migration (IDVRM), a recently UK-registered non-profit enterprise that specialises in developing and strengthening community-led, culturally resonant and faith-sensitive responses to domestic violence. We are a collective of highly specialised researchers, practitioners and community members dedicated to decolonising knowledge and systems that neglect the needs of minorities in the UK and internationally.

The Problem We Address: A Silent Epidemic Amplified by Inequalities 

Domestic violence, or violence perpetrated by intimate partners and family relatives, affects millions of people around the world. In England and Wales alone, in 2023-2024, 1.61 million women and 712,000 men were victims of domestic abuse (ONS, 2024). Domestic violence is a global crisis, but for survivors in ethnic minority, religious and migrant communities, finding culturally resonant and effective support is often a struggle. Existing services frequently fail to account for the cultural, religious and migration factors that affect experiences of domestic abuse and help-seeking options. This oversight is significant: in 2020, 280 million people were international migrants, with Europe and Asia hosting roughly 61% of this population (IOM, 2024) and about 85.6% of the world’s population adhered to a religious tradition (Statista, 2025). Structural and funding inequalities perpetuate knowledge and information asymmetries that hinder culturally resonant and community-led responses. At IDVRM, these are the voices we aim to amplify and the gap we aim to fill: by being a bridge between policy,  practice and lived experience and by supporting grassroots service providers to build capacity and research-based approaches to scalable and sustainable impact.

Our Founder's Story in her own words

''After spending five years in academia leading impact-oriented research on gender abuses and domestic violence, I set up IDVRM to work directly with service providers and communities on the ground. My dedication to this work is deeply personal: I was born in Moldova but was raised by immigrant parents in financially insecure conditions in Greece, where I experienced the stresses of migration and domestic violence first-hand and witnessed the impact of structural inequalities. Over the past 15 years, I have combined lived experience with novel and rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship in local communities from Senegal to Ethiopia to the UK—including serving as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and leading the ~£1.8 million Project dldl/ድልድል at SOAS, University of London—to diversify and equalise responses to domestic violence across wealthy and less wealthy communities and societies and to highlight a critical reality: without  contextual understanding, we cannot effectively support survivors from religious, ethnic minority and migrant communities.

IDVRM was founded to bridge this gap to promote the Project dldl/ድልድል Model of co-creating evidence-based, culturally resonant and faith-sensitive solutions with communities, free from bureaucratic barriers, ensuring that interventions are informed both by robust research and communities’ own lived experience.''

Listen to Dr Romina Istratii introduce IDVRM and our team:

Why We Need Your Support: Delivering Evidence-Based, Impactful and Culturally Resonant Programmes

We are raising funds to support our newly established institute, which will enable us to further our mission: promote evidence-based and culturally resonant responses to domestic violence in ethnic minority and migrant faith communities by strengthening the capacity of community-based domestic violence service providers to deliver and scale out robust and impactful interventions in the UK and internationally. We need financial assistance to cover vital star-tup costs for IDVRM, including accounting and legal fees and fees for part-time associates to assist with evidence-building and publications, and crucially, costs to launch our first community-based programmes, which include:

• ‘What Works’ Series of Workshops on Migrant Survivor Experiences to Inform UK Policy Frameworks Engaging the ‘By and For’ Sector 
• Transforming Responses to Sexual Violence through a Social Care Model in Post-conflict Ethiopia
• Understanding and Breaking Cycles of Violence in Displaced Communities in the UK, Poland, and Ethiopia

Be Part of our Decolonial Effort!

Your support enables us to challenge dominant paradigms, address structural inequalities and help more community-based organisations continue to provide culturally resonant and faith-sensitive, vital support to those most often overlooked. Join IDVRM in building a world where survivors of domestic violence, regardless of their background, can find the support they need to exit abusive situations and thrive.