|
Our Major Achievements - February 1999
Training and Education
Our Major Achievements:
- In partnership with the Roeher Institute and
funded by the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture
and Recreation, EWA developed and implemented
training and information sessions on
Women with Disabilities, Deaf Women and the Domestic Violence Courts to
Crown Attorneys, Police, Victim/Witness
Assistance Programme Staff, Judges, community
agencies and disability organizations working
with women with disabilities who are victims
of domestic violence. Activities included
developing a participants manual, facilitators
manual and training plan, a "tool
kit" for participants and a province-wide
directory of services across Ontario;
- Since 1991, designed and delivered 311 workshops with a total of 9441 participants, to: Boards of Education, immigrant/refugee groups, community groups, faith communities,
- Currently completing materials for
physicians in hospitals on identifying and
responding to assaulted women, and training
physicians in hospitals provincewide;
- Conducted training with Sexual Assault
Care Centres (SACC's) to assist them in
expanding their mandate to include Domestic
Violence;
- Designed, developed and delivered a
week-long Skillshop for Immigrant Community
Educators. The work was completed in
partnership with a working committee of
immigrant/refugee women and The Doris Marshall
Institute for Education and Action. We
continue to distribute the publication from
this Skillshop today.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Increased the number of women who can design and deliver training and education workshops, in their own languages and from their own cultural contexts;
- Increased the number of school guidance
counsellors and crisis teams who can
respond in culturally appropriate ways to
children who witness violence;
- Increased the ability to respond to the needs of assaulted women, and understanding of woman abuse for a wide variety of constituents, including: staff in community organizations, doctors, public health nurses,
emergency room staff, ESL adult students and teachers, faith communities, shelter volunteers, housing groups and coops;
- Increased the number of trainers/educators who are able to address issues related to women with disabilities and violence;
- Increased the accessibility to the Domestic Violence Courts for women with disabilities.
Violence in Teen Dating Relationships
Our Major Achievements:
- With Women's Habitat of Etobicoke, jointly
produced an educator's guide, Preventing Violence in Dating Relationships: A Teaching Guide
and a student kit, Dating Violence Does Happen. It Can Happen to
You!. Thousands of copies of these
resources have been distributed to school
boards in Ontario;
- Cosponsor innovative educational events such as Video Days and Student Poster Exhibits with the Toronto District School Board;
- Designed and implemented provincewide
training for secondary school teachers and
guidance counsellors regarding responding
to the needs of children and youth who witness
violence in their homes;
- Developed materials on violence against high risk youth (lesbian, gay and bisexual) for use by teachers in secondary schools;
- Developed a Teen Dating Violence Resource list for parents and educators.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Increased student and teacher awareness
of violence in dating relationships
provincewide, by supporting the delivery of
violence prevention education in Ontario;
- Through professional development days, trained school personnel in eight School Boards in Toronto, improving their ability to deliver violence prevention education
and respond to violence in their midst;
- Student Poster Exhibits have had high participation rates, and have given students the opportunity to creatively synthesize information on teen dating violence;
- Fulfilled the requests of educators who had been asking for resources to assist them in creating safer school environments
for lesbian, gay and bisexual youth for many years. Preliminary feedback on the resources has been extremely positive.
Partnership with Immigrant and Refugee Youth
Our Major Achievements:
- Codeveloped a Young Women of Colour Peer
Action Program on preventing violence against
young women, in partnership with young women (aged 14-25)
in the Vietnamese, South Asian, and Central
American communities. Identified and trained
ten young women in the Vietnamese, South
Asian, and Central American communities to
organize and cofacilitate (with subjectarea
experts in the community), a series of
fortyone workshops with young women, focussing
on: violence prevention, intergenerational
conflict, stress, health issues, and the
impact of systemic violence racism,
sexism, heterosexism, poverty, and ableism.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Helped young women in these communities develop their facilitation and leadership skills;
- Helped reach young women who have difficulty in accessing information through mainstream sources;
- Helped break the isolation many young
immigrant and refugee women feel by helping
them develop peer support groups and establish networks for
informationsharing;
- Aided these communities in developing culturally appropriate models of giving and receiving support.
Publications Distribution
Our Major Achievements:
- January 1990 to March 1997, distributed 274,595 pieces of educational material to 23,105 clients. In 1997/8 we added 45,000 pieces to this number;
- Significant proportion of these publications
were Crisis Resource Kits for women in crisis,
their relatives and friends, abusive men,
shelters, concerned individuals/neighbours/
employers/doctors.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Expanded the knowledge base of all our clients;
- Women report that using our print materials and services have enabled them to recognize and leave abusive relationships;
- Abusive men report they have been able to
recognize their abusive behaviour and seek
help based on our referrals;
- Many clients have been referred to appropriate and helpful local resources;
- Anyone, regardless of their financial resources, can access our materials due to our "sliding scale to zero";
- Materials have been distributed on behalf of other organizations who do not have access to distribution networks.
Materials Development and Production
Our Major Achievements:
- We have developed and produced a variety of unique resources in partnership with diverse language, racial, cultural, disability other minority communities, including:
- For Men to Think About: You May be Becoming or Already Are an Abusive Man,
illustrated booklets for abusive men in
English, Farsi, Italian, Portuguese,
Vietnamese, Tagalog, Tamil, Spanish,
Chinese;
- Challenging Myths and Claiming Power Together: A Handbook to Set Up and Assess Support Groups for and with Immigrant and Refugee Women;
- A resource for educators on creating safer school environments for lesbian, gay and bisexual youth at high risk of violence;
- Educational resources in French, Plain Language (English), on diskette and audiotape for women with disabilities and professionals on Women with Disabilities, Deaf Women and the Domestic Violence Courts;
- Biannual, educational Newsletter on subjects including: Interventions with Abusive Men (Spring 1998); Health Issues and Violence Against Women (Winter 1997); Legal Issues (Spring 1997);
- Resource for assaulted rural women in
Ontario in collaboration with Community
Abuse Programme for Rural Ontario (CAPRO);
- Poster on the awareness of wife assault/woman abuse written in Vietnamese;
- Handbook for abused immigrant/refugee women written in Urdu and Vietnamese;
- Resource List on gay/lesbian/bisexual issues for teens and educators;
- Native Resource List;
- Poster on the issue of recognizing violence against women as a human rights issue.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Increased the usefulness of our print materials by developing them in specific languages with the communities for which they are intended;
- Newsletter is a vital networking and communication tool
linking many service providers and concerned
community members with other groups, and
provides uptodate information;
- Production of materials supports community economic development, as we use typesetters, printers and graphic artists from the intended communities;
- Publications are known widely as reliable, high quality sources of information on woman abuse;
- Many community groups use our materials in their community educational work.
Women's Rights as Human Rights
Our Major Achievements:
- EWA was one of the first organizations in
Canada to address the issue of violence
against women as a human rights issue. We
produced a poster and a study guide in
conjunction with an international campaign
to have violence against women recognized and
responded to as a human rights issue by all
United Nations member countries.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- The international network that resulted from the campaign locally supports the work of lawyers who are representing women claiming refugee status based on gender persecution;
- Improved the ability of women to recognize their rights under Canadian law and internationally;
- More women are now able to access international networks which are working on violence against women and human rights;
- Organizations are able to use our poster as a fundraising tool by purchasing them from us at discount bulk rates.
Resource Centre
Our Major Achievements:
- EWA houses a collection of over 5000 documents on wife assault/woman abuse;
- Our collection is unique as it focuses on materials not available through mainstream channels;
- We house print and audiovisual materials in English, several other languages and alternate formats;
- Our collection is catalogued and classified in a system which responds uniquely to the subject area of violence prevention;
- Provided technical support to 30 Canadian
Women's Foundation (CWF) grantees across the
country in the form of publications and
resources as well as staff time for research and consultation;
- Deigned and implemented an EWA Website which
receives over 10,000 visits per month.
The difference this work has made for our constituents:
- Improved the ability of people to access our materials
by taking them to different physical locations and by displays at conferences to meet the expressed needs/requirements of those constituents who engage/require our services/resources;
- Members of immigrant/refugee communities tell us that our unique collection of international resources
in languages other than English enables them to better understand and prevent violence against women in their own communities;
- Many groups pursuing violence prevention work in their own communities have been able to build on existing documentation, rather than "reinventing the wheel";
- Through supportive reference assistance and
consultation, have improved the ability of our
constituents to do research, access our
resources and develop their own materials.
|
