"Are you safe?"

That is one of the first questions I learned that you need to ask when answering the crisis hot line. My second day of training yesterday, I learned all about the shelters, crisis intervention, communication and listening skills. Training really is very interesting. I would definitely recommend it to everyone, it is a great way to become more aware about domestic violence that occurs in all of our communities, so that we can try and stop it. The more educated you are, the better decisions you make.

The Battered Women's Shelter provides the following services: counseling (one on one talking, not professional), support (necessities; food, water, clothing, shelter), planning (education, careers), listening, safety (legal advice about protection orders), case management, youth advocacy and in-house support groups.

The first step in obtaining help from the B.W.S. is Crisis Intervention. Crisis Intervention starts out with a staff member or volunteer talking with a victim of domestic violence trying to identify the crisis or problem. Next resources are given to the victim so that they can seek other help if needed. A good website that is often referred to clients is http://211summit.org/. This website contains a great number of resources that may be helpful to clients. Emotional support is a big thing that the B.W.S. offers to all the victims that come in for help. The staff and volunteers are educated on domestic violence and realize how courageous these women are for seeking help. Another huge issue that is dealt with is the safety of the clients. The locations of all the shelters are kept confidential as are the clients who reside in them. It is the most dangerous time for a victim when she/he leaves their batterer.

Communication is very important in trying to help the victims of domestic violence. When a victim is communicating with a staff/volunteer they have a message that they are trying to get across, therefore they are the encoder. As the victim is talking to the staff/volunteer they are trying to decode what the victim is saying to understand the message. Then the staff/volunteer reply with their feedback. It's actually a tricky process and when you're trying to decode what someone has just said you tend to tune out what else they're saying. When you're communicating with someone they notice most, your body language(55%), then your tone(38%) and finally your content( only 7%). Communication is inescapable, irreversible, complicated and contextual.

Listening is also extremely important. Sometimes the reason why a victim calls the hot line or comes in for help is so that someone will listen to them. Some good listening skills are eye contact, affirming with nods and feedback, giving your full undivided attention, paraphrasing what they said, avoiding emotional involvement and asking open ended questions. Do not doodle, interrupt, ask yes or no questions and don't try to fix their problems. Hearing and listening are not the same thing. You should be giving empathetic listening, not sympathetic listening. Sympathy is feeling what someone else feels through you. Empathy is feeling what someone else feels through them.

The photograph was taken from www.inclusive-solutions.com.

Peace Begins At Home

This afternoon was my first day of training to be a volunteer at the Battered Women's Shelter of Summit County. Today was the first day of a total of six days of training that I have to complete before I can begin volunteering. It may seem like a very long period of time to get trained just to volunteer, but all the volunteers are trained exactly like the staff members that work there too. This is so that the volunteers are prepared to handle all sorts of situations like answering the crisis hot lines, caring for children that have witnessed abuse, talking with the women themselves about the abuse they've endured and many other situations that cannot just be dealt with by people who've come in to volunteer without the proper training. Training is critical in dealing with this organization. To understand the reasons why domestic abuse occurs and why women don't leave the batterers and many other critical questions are all discussed in training. I will learn what is appropriate to talk about and what is not with the women and children. I will learn how to react in certain situations and how to deal with any crisis that I encounter.

Today I learned all about the history of the B.W.S. and their programs that they offer. The first support system that was set up for battered women in Akron, OH was at the Akron Y.M.C.A. In 1980 they opened up the 24-hour crisis hot line and later that year they purchased the Summit County Crisis Center which held 24 emergency beds for women in need of an immediate safe shelter. Then in 1986 a facility was purchased and named Step II for a transitional housing unit for women and children which holds 50 beds. There has been many other additions to the B.W.S. organization, just too many to mention. If you'd like to read more about the history of the B.W.S. please check out their website http://www.scmcbws.org/history.asp.

Some of the programs they offer include: Children Who Witness Violence, Court Advocacy, Family Stability and Support Groups. Children Who Witness Violence deals with children who've witnessed violence at home, at school, in their neighborhood or anywhere else. They are provided with on-going counseling from Akron Children's Hospital. Court Advocacy helps women and men with legal counseling, getting protection orders, attending court hearings and helping them fill out paperwork and answer any questions they may have about their rights. Family Stability offers case management help. They help women get community services, they make sure their homes are safe, they help with finances and provide emotional support. Support Groups are offered to women so that they can talk to other women who've gone through similar situations. They provide ways to get help, different ways to cope, how to handle situations that lead to a crisis and also what the community has to offer.

I learned a lot today. I especially learned not to judge any victim for not leaving a batterer because it is so much more complex than just leaving.

The photograph was taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/trebolazul/.

International Organization

Women for Women in International helps women who've been victims of war conflict in their countries. W.W.I. offers a one year program for women who have no where else to turn. The first step in the program is to give the women immediate medical attention, food, water and other essentials. This is provided to them through sponsors, which they write to back and forth. The next step of the program is to participate in the Renewing Women's Life Skills program. This program gets women aware of their rights, educates them on leadership roles, and teaches them other vocational and technical skills. This program helps women to regain their self-confidence and build themselves back up so they can become more active in their communities. The third step of the program is to give the women job skills so that they can get well paying jobs to support themselves and their families and continue their success. The last step of the program is to give the women comprehensive business services. These services are given to help the women start and manage their own businesses. W.W.I. also helps the women with access to markets, help with the products and stores for the women to sell their products. W.W.I. helps women in the following countries: Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan. If you would like to help change the lives of women from these war torn countries please check out this website http://www.womenforwomen.org/about-women-for-women/sponsoring-women.php

The photograph was taken from twofortheroad.blogs.nytimes.com.

Battered Women's Shelter

The Battered Women's Shelter of Summit County deals with women and children who've been victims of domestic violence. The main goal of the B.W.S. is to get the community aware of abuse so that we can stop it before it happens, therefore eliminating it as a whole and in return creating peace in families. This varies across the different people involved because they each help out in different ways, but if you put them all together the goal is achieved. The shelter's issues and goals compare quite relatively to my international organization which is Women for Women International. W.W.I. helps women who've been affected by wars in their countries to start a new life without violence. The two organizations have the same common goal in mind, which is to eliminate violence in our lives.

The Battered Women's Shelter of Summit County is made up of many people. There are women and children who are trying to escape domestic violence in their own homes so they come to the shelter for safety. There's also a board of directors that try to help and service the women and children as best as they can and try to bring about peace within the families. A small group of staff members work with the women and children directly to provide support and services to them twenty-four hours a day. Volunteers at the shelter help out a lot. They do many great things to service the shelter and the people within it. They do anything from raising awareness about the shelter and domestic violence to planning field trips for the children to answering the crisis hot line. There are so many great people involved with the Battered Women's Shelter of Summit County that the main goal of the shelter (which is to eliminate abuse in families and instead create a sense of peace) is really achieved so our community can really benefit from it.

They target the community. They provide a crisis center which is an emergency shelter for women and children who need to escape domestic violence in their homes right away. They also provide support for a violence free life with support groups and their family stability program. Educational services are also provided by the shelter to target the community and get them aware and involved. There's a lady whose only job at the shelter is to go around to different schools, churches, clubs and groups and educate people about the B.W.S. They provide the community with real statistics they get mostly from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

I'm very excited to start interacting with the people of the B.W.S. I'm also very interested in seeing the similarities and differences between the shelter for homeless women and their children that I currently volunteer at in Akron. One difference I already noticed was, to volunteer at the B.W.S. I have to go through a twenty hour, four day, training program before I can even meet the women and children in the shelter and start volunteering. At the shelter I currently volunteer at I only had to fill out a few pages of paperwork in person and get a tour of the building. My first day of volunteering, I had no idea what to expect, or how to react to certain situations. I think the volunteering at the B.W.S. is going to be quite different, but we'll see. I'm excited to start the training which begins in a little over a week.

The photograph was taken from http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy-dc.org/.