New Zealand /Aotearoa has the worst domestic violence statistics in the developed world. It's one of our most significant social issues. Over 500,000 incidents are estimated to happen every year (80% go unreported), and it costs the country an estimated $4billion ($4,000,000,000) minimum every year (that's at least $839 for every man, woman and child). And it's not going away. Every year, around 13 women, 10 men and 9 children die through domestic violence – an issue that becomes normalised within families, through generations. It has to stop. Founded by Vic Tamati, (face of the It's Not OK Campaign), Safe Man Safe Family exists to reduce domestic violence by engaging perpetrators in peer-led stopping violence programmes that truly connect. We know that most of these people have grown up themselves in a violent home, without mentors, often with deprivation. They've literally been hard-wired as kids to use violence as their default coping mechanism – with terrible results for their future partners and children. Yet we do know that men who complete most of a stopping violence programme are 80% less likely to continue offending. And that these men respond best to help from their peers – men who genuinely understand what it means to be trapped in a cycle of violence. These are men who were once just kids. Just a kid who had hopes and dreams. Just a kid who grew up to be the sort of man he never wanted to be. Just a man who once trusted his parents and grandparents to teach him how to behave – but was betrayed and broken because no one stepped in for him. We are stepping in for these men now, and for their families. So their children do not have to walk the same path.