CHALLENGE As Georgia’s lawmakers proposed bills that would roll back decades of progress for women’s safety, Men Stopping Violence, a social change organization dedicated to ending violence against women, began engaging men to change the face (and gender) of women’s advocacy at the capitol. Asked to support the legislative agenda led by the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence during the state’s first Republican-controlled legislature in more than a hundred years, Influence Factory worked to prevent significant losses in the struggle for women’s rights. SOLUTION Men Stopping Violence tapped Influence Factory to organize former batterers as advocates to protect and extend women’s rights. We organized group discussions, invited guest speakers and presented crash courses at the capitol to recruit and train men to lobby lawmakers on behalf of our agenda. The program inserted a compassionate, unified male voice into a conversation about the safety of women and families. Empowering men to advocate for women got the attention of the male-dominated legislature and ultimately was successful at halting and amending unfriendly legislation. RESULTS During the 2005 legislative session, Influence Factory successfully engaged more than half of the men referred by MSV and built a database of citizen advocates that contributed to the following victories: House Bill 221, which alters the structure of child support payments, was amended to delay implementation until 2006 in order to convene a bi-partisan committee of judges and legislators to study child support and propose a fair and just income shares model. Senate Bill 25, which extends the waiting period for divorce to 6 months [with children] and 4 months [without children], was amended to enable a spouse to bypass the waiting period by making a confidential, sworn affidavit of domestic violence. The core group of men continues to work on advocacy and support issues for other MSV initiatives, including a new project: Because We Have Daughters.