Players on the Vaux Big Picture High School football team call Valencia Peterson “Coach V,” but unlike the team’s other coaches, she’s not drawing up X’s and O’s.

Peterson trains the coaches in a specialized curriculum to teach their players how to recognize domestic abuse and prevent it in their homes and schools through her organization, Open Door Abuse Awareness & Prevention.

About 21% of men in the U.S. reported being victims of intimate partner violence before age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Peterson gathers the boys at Vaux to take a knee, she tells them she wants to create an environment where they’re comfortable talking about problems in their lives.

ODAAP is a small nonprofit that brought in about $141,000 in revenue in 2023. It works with a handful of boys’ athletic programs in the area and operates a separate non-sports mentorship program for high school girls as well as one for all genders.

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