Final Report
City of San Mateo Speak Up Report
Reporting Period: June 2nd, 2025-August 6th, 2025
Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse (CORA) is grateful to the City of San Mateo for its generous partnership in launching and piloting CORA’s Speak Up Program. This report covers a retrospective of what work was accomplished during the pilot period.
Program Goals
Reeling from the murder of a San Carlos mother in broad daylight during September 2022, the City of San Carlos teamed up with CORA to create the Speak Up program. CORA developed and piloted a tailored program for those who live, work and operate businesses in San Carlos through the Speak Up Program. This program was designed to provide local businesses with education to be effective and timely in helping their employees and customers who are impacted by domestic violence by using a three-module training designed to:
(1) help them understand domestic violence;
(2) teach them how they can recognize when customers and employees are experiencing domestic violence (the red flags); and
(3) provide useful tips on what to say (or not say) so they can Speak Up when they see someone is in need due to domestic violence.
After trainings, the team conducted a one question survey to gauge the extent to which the presentation was helpful: after the trainings, 92% said they now know how to recognize and respond to domestic violence.
In addition to presentations, the program staff handed out Speak Up bags that included bathroom stickers and business cards with CORA QR codes and “Teach Sheets” that provide an ongoing resource for businesses to refer to. The Teach Sheets feature information shared in the presentations, including the useful things to say/not say and CORA’s contact information so businesses know to refer people in need to CORA.
CORA's Speak Up Program in San Mateo by the Numbers
TOTAL June 2nd, 2025 – August 6th, 2025
Education Events 61 Presentations
Business Participants 270 Business Participants
The Top 5 Businesses Trained in Terms of Employees Served
Business/Org Attendees
1 Samaritan House 17
2 Abode Services 14
3 Glamorous Look 4
4 Mi Rancho Market 4
5 Prima Market 3
Diversity of San Mateo Businesses Served
The Business Sectors pie chart highlights the distribution of organizations from the 2024 Speak Up Tracker. The two largest groups, Retail (24.8%) and Restaurants - Food (24.4%), together make up almost half of all businesses represented. Following these, Other Business (17.8%) and Salons - Beauty (15.6%) also show a strong presence, reflecting the diverse range of industries included.
Smaller but still notable sectors include Financial & Real Estate and Children’s Services, each contributing just over 4%. Community Organizations and Medical - Healthcare account for around 3% each, while Fitness - Wellness makes up about 2.6%. The smallest sector, Health and Beauty, represents less than 1% of the businesses in the tracker.
A Warm Reception
“The event that occurred September 2022 was horrendous. It was an event so horrific you would have expected the community would distrust strangers and be resistant to the topic of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse” -- not so in San Mateo. The community was very welcoming. The hospitality extended to CORA
-- including being brought into businesses’
back rooms, staff rooms and sharing cups of
coffee, bobas or smoothies as we reviewed
the Speak Up Program together. It was
heartwarming and inspiring. San Mateo
businesses and organizations care very much
about their city and how to keep their
community safe.
Community Support
Employees at several San Mateo businesses
had not heard of CORA previously, and were unsure about the services we offered or how to speak about the topic of domestic violence. The businesses were happy the City partnered with CORA to help prevent future domestic violence in the community and keep their neighbors and community safe.
Timely Help
On more than one occasion, local business owners immediately responded that the training was needed at their company. Comments we have heard again and again sound like “Oh! We need this information!” and “We have heard from a customer recently about this!” and “Can you train us now?”
Business owners were grateful to receive the training, and were even more excited to receive the CORA resources to post in their place of business to raise awareness.
Future
The Speak Up Program, developed by the City of San Carlos in partnership with CORA, has catalyzed a county-wide movement to address and prevent domestic violence. An additional ten cities – including San Mateo-- adopted the Speak Up campaign for 2024, thereby amplifying the reach and influence of what we learned during the San Carlos Pilot program. This collaborative effort indicates a growing acknowledgment of how important it is to have proactive education to cultivate “community immunity” to domestic violence.
And there’s more. As Speak Up comes to an end and the 10 participating cities finish up, many cities are interested in renewing their contracts and bringing Speak Up annually to their cities to reach new businesses. We look forward to working with new and returning cities to increase awareness of CORA services and resources in the new year.
We are committed to updating the City of San Mateo on our ongoing progress related to Speak Up. Thanks to the foresight, dedication, and support of San Mateo’s leadership, our communities are benefitting from what we piloted last year. During 2025, we are continuing to sow the seeds for community transformation throughout the County, converting bystanders to upstanders. We envision a future where Speak Up is not just a program, but a fundamental part of our community's DNA—cultivating resilience, understanding, and solidarity against domestic violence.