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/.