Safe Homes Project
SAFE HOMES PROJECT NEWS
Winter 2009 Safe Homes Project Newsletter
Click here to read our Winter 2009 Safe Homes Project Newsletter.
16th Annual Remembrance Vigil
This October marks the 16th year of Safe Homes Project's Annual Remembrance Vigil. The purpose of the vigil is to commemorate Brooklynites whose lives were taken at the hands of intimate partner violence within the last year, from October 2008 to October 2009. Additionally, the vigil serves to honor the strength and courage of those domestic violence survivors who continue to fight for their safety and their right to live violence-free.
On Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 6:30 P.M. staff members, community supporters, and survivors alike will gather in front of P.S. 321, on 7th Avenue and 1st Street in Brooklyn, in remembrance of those lost to domestic violence. After opening comments are given, a list will be read of those killed in Brooklyn in the past year. As a testament that these victims will not be forgotten, a candle will be lit in honor of each victim.
Candles aglow, we will march as a community in silence and reverence through the Park Slope area, ending at the Park Slope United Methodist Church Sanctuary. There, survivors will share their struggles and triumphs with us and guests will speak briefly about their partnership with SHP. The PSUMC Women's Committee will provide refreshments and the Center for Anti-Violence Education will do a brief self-defense/martial arts demonstration.
October marks Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and we look forward to recognizing Safe Homes Project's 16 years of commitment to honoring and remembering those lost and those courageously fighting for their lives.
Please join us this year as we commemorate this 16th vigil year.
For further information, please contact us at 718-499-2151.
Click here to download a flyer in English.
Click here to download a flyer in Spanish.
Fall 2008 Safe Homes Project Newsletter
Click here to read our Fall 2008 Safe Homes Project Newsletter.
Raising Youth Awareness
In 2006, SHP launched the Healthy Youth Relationship Options (HYRO) Initiative. The project focused on bringing information, training, and outreach to young people in Good Shepherd's Brooklyn Young Adult Borough Centers (YABC). Together with a community organizing intern from Hunter College School of Social Work, SHP recruits interested interns from the YABC programs, provides them with 20 hours of training in healthy relationships and abuse prevention, and then mentors them as peer educators. The interns then choose an abuse-awareness project to create and present to their school communities. For example in 2006, the HYRO interns produced a Healthy Relationships "zine," which included definitions, stories and resources, and was distributed to 300 YABC students and staff.
Expanding our Work with LGBTQ Survivors
If you are an LGBTQ victim of intimate partner violence, please call our Safe Homes Project Hotline 718-499-2151, Monday -Friday 9-5, or after 5 p.m. please call 1-800-621-HOPE (4673).
From our earliest days, SHP has worked with lesbian and bisexual women battered in intimate relationships with other women. In 2000, SHP also began offering services, including shelter, to transgender women who were survivors of partner violence, making it one of the first domestic violence shelters in New York State to do so.
In collaboration with the NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, and the NYS LGBTQ Domestic Violence Network, through which we received funding for training, outreach, and education, we are now offering our non-residential services, including counseling, advocacy, safety planning, and support group, to all LGBTQ survivors of intimate partner violence. SHP is also a member of the NYC LGBTQ Domestic Violence Task Force and was a lead organizer on the 2006 and 2007 "Real Lives, Real Survivors" conferences dealing with LGBTQ intimate partner violence.
New Initiative Helps Connect Survivors to Services
SHP is partnering with the Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence and the Brooklyn Family Justice Center under a federal grant to engage survivors of domestic violence who have had contact with the police. Called the Early Victim Engagement Project, (EVE), the initiative will provide a means of connecting victims to critical information, safety planning and services as early as possible. The SHP advocate on this project will focus efforts on Spanish-speaking victims in the 72nd, 83rd, and 90th Brooklyn police precincts, where high levels of domestic violence have been reported.
Survivor Stories
Click here to read stories and poems from survivors.
Numbers and Statistics
As many as a one third of all high-school and college age young people experience violence in an intimate or dating relationship.
It is estimated that partner violence happens in same sex/gender relationships at about the same rate it happens in opposite-sex/gender relationships.
