In the late 1970’s a group of Coos County women gathered to form a non-profit group focusing on women’s issues. The group was named Women Center, and they sponsored fundraisers, free pregnancy testing, and other activities. Seeing a need for services for battered women a new non-profit was born from the Women Center, the Coos County Women’s Crisis Service.

In the early 80’s, through volunteer recruitment the agency was able to establish a 24-hour crisis line, a network of safe home providers, and crisis intervention counseling. In the late 80’s the organization obtained the Cloe House, which continues to be used as one of our emergency shelter for survivors and their children to this day.

The Women’s Crisis Service grew tremendously during the 80’s in terms of the programs and services it offered the community. The agency began focusing more attention on building partnerships with other social and human service groups in Coos County. In the mid 90’s the Women’s Crisis Service secured an outreach office and was able to move its administrative functions out of the shelter. In the late 90’s education programs for local schools were developed, and at this same time the Women’s Crisis Service also became a partner with the Newmark Center, which was a career and opportunity one-stop family center.

In 2003 we changed our name to Women’s Safety & Resource Center (WSRC) to better reflect our purpose and services and so that the community would know that you don’t have to be in “crisis” to come to our agency.

In 2006, WSRC and NeighborWorks Umpqua came together to open Coddington Place – a 10-unit apartment complex with an Outreach Office for WSRC attached. The purpose of the apartment complex is to provide permanent housing to low-income residents of Coos County, with preferential listing going to survivors of domestic violence referred by WSRC.

In 2017 we changed the name once again to The SAFE Project and updated our mission statement to better reflect our mission to provide services to all survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and to demonstrate our goal to become gender inclusive. The SAFE Project expanded on this goal in 2018 by beginning facilitating emergency shelter to all genders.

In July 2024 The SAFE Project, in partnership with the Oregon Department of Justice and Oregon Department of Human Services officially expanded their service area to include Curry County, one of few DV/SA agencies in Oregon to facilitate services to two counties.