Emergency shelter raises awareness about family violence through 2nd annual purple ribbon campaign.
High River, AB November 2nd, 2015 – High River residents will be seeing purple throughout the month of November. Rowan House Emergency Shelter has received permission from the town to once again hang purple ribbons throughout the downtown core to raise awareness about family violence.
November marks national Family Violence Prevention Month and Rowan House is taking the opportunity to shed light on the issue. “Our Branches program provides preventative education presentations to schools and community groups throughout the year,” explained the shelter’s Ally Cramm, “but it’s great to have a month set aside where we can ramp up the conversation and have more voices join us in saying, ‘family violence and bullying are not okay.’”
“We’ve also improved on our purple ribbon campaign, started last year, by adding a fact or statistic card to each display so people will actually know what the ribbon is for and learn more about family violence,” Cramm said. “For example: violence occurs in all age, racial, economic, educational, occupational and faith groups – or in other words, it really can affect anyone.”
In its 2014-2015 fiscal year, Rowan House admitted 98 women and 129 children fleeing abuse while having to turn away 354 women and children. Cramm said, while they’re now operating at their full capacity of 24 beds, many residents are needing to stay longer due to a lack of safe, affordable housing to move on to. However, the shelter will be finishing a feasibility study on Transitional Housing this month and will have a better idea about possible options for expanding on the four units it currently has to work with.
Rowan House staff and volunteers will be hanging the ribbons on Thursday, November 12th from 1-3pm. Cramm says they’ll also have their information booth set up during that time if anyone wants to stop by to learn more.
The Sobeys in High River and Okotoks have also generously partnered with Rowan House to do a point of sale campaign this month so the community can support the effort to end family violence by donating two dollars at the till.
Rowan House Emergency Shelter provides crisis intervention, long-term support and education for those affected family violence in rural communities.