Founded in 1977, Emerge was the nation’s first counseling program for men who physically assault their partners and is a national training and resource center on domestic violence. Emerge's mission is to eliminate violence toward women. In working toward this goal, Emerge seeks to educate individual men who batter, prevent young people from learning to accept violence in their relationships, improve institutional responses to domestic violence, and increase public awareness about the causes and solutions to violence against women. With the development of parenting education groups for fathers, Emerge has expanded its mission to include a goal of helping men with histories of domestic violence to become more responsible parents.