IBE team launches crowdfunding campaign for financial empowerment of domestic violence survivors

In the United States alone, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.

FinAbility, an Oregon-based nonprofit, was established in October of 2020 by Lehigh alumna Stacy Sawin '14, a graduate of the prestigious Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) program. FinAbility aims to address the most common reason survivors remain trapped in abusive relationships—financial abuse and insecurity. Working with survivors and advocates, the group is developing digital tools that empower survivors to learn about and access the financial resources necessary to break, and escape, an abusive cycle.

So, when Stacy and FinAbility found itself in need of some support from a team ready-made to integrate individual passion and technical sophistication, she knew exactly where to turn: the students of Lehigh IBE.

"For our capstone project, Finability challenged our team to assist them with their goal of empowering survivors of financial abuse," says Gabrielle Effendi '22, an IBE student studying finance and industrial and systems engineering. "Based on our research into FinAbility's growing operation, we decided to develop a video to use as the centerpiece of a crowdfunding campaign. Like Stacy and the FinAbility team, we believe that financial abuse may not be well-understood by the general public, so we determined it was important to also use the video to educate people about the role that financial abuse plays in perpetuating abusive relationships."