Meredith influenced national awareness of teen dating violence when she founded Break the Cycle, an innovative nonprofit organization whose mission is to end domestic violence by working with youth. Break the Cycle provides preventive education, free legal services, advocacy and support to young people ages 12 to 22.
Meredith's interest in helping victims of domestic violence grew out of a personal experience when she was involved in an abusive relationship as a teen. Later, when she began volunteering time at a legal-aid clinic, she found that the abuse suffered by adult victims began much earlier in their young teen years, and that existing organizations placed emphasis on helping people who had already been abused rather than putting their efforts into preventing abuse. She also found that there were few programs that taught young people what a healthy relationship looks like and how to avoid abuse, and founded Break the Cycle in response.
Break the Cycle is the nation's first organization to provide domestic violence prevention services to a particularly at-risk, and severely underserved, age group. A pioneer in the field, the organization currently serves as a model program for communities nationwide seeking more effective methods of addressing the problem of domestic violence among youth. Break the Cycle is currently opening offices in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. in order to expand its much-needed services. In addition, Meredith herself has been instrumental in getting Wyoming's domestic violence laws extended to protect minors and individuals in dating relationships.
Meredith is a young woman whose personal dynamism, law degree, State Bar credentials and professional acumen would most certainly have been financially rewarded many times over in private practice. However, she has dedicated herself to ending domestic violence and effecting social change through non-profit work.
Most extraordinary is the fact that Meredith Blake set out to meet these critical and largely neglected needs when she was only 25. At 32, she is among the youngest social entrepreneurs leading a new generation toward community change.
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