ncoming women's shelter board president Angela Kolody ties a ribbon around a pole downtown on Friday to help kick off Family Violence Prevention Month.--NEWS PHOTO MO CRANKER
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@MHNmocranker
Purple ribbons will hang around the city for the month of November – all of which have meaning.
Staff and volunteers from Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society gathered at city hall Friday afternoon to officially dub November as Family Violence Prevention Month and to hang ribbons to raise awareness.
“We want to bring light to the issue of family violence in our community,” said executive director Natasha Carvalho. “We have a declaration with Mayor Ted Clugston today and it will officially declare that this is Family Violence Prevention Month.
“We’re then going to walk around downtown and put these ribbons all over. We want to just blitz the city so people see purple everywhere they’re going.”
Carvalho says getting people talking about family violence is important.
“Getting people to see a ribbon and say, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ Is a really effective way at getting people involved,” she said. “Once people get up and check out the ribbon, they can see the tag on it that has a bit of information on it.”
Carvalho says family violence is a real issue in the Medicine Hat Community.
“Our numbers stay steady,” she said. “On one hand, it’s nice to know that people are coming to us for help – on the other hand the issue is still present and important to our community.”
The shelter is hoping to make people aware of how many children stay at the shelter due to family violence scenarios.
“We actually had a Halloween event at the shelter for all of the kids – so many of them probably had to leave their costumes at home before arriving at the shelter,” said Carvalho. “We have about 1,400 people accessing at least one of our programs each year.
“For a city this size, we see a lot of people – a lot of those people end up being children.”
Carvalho says anyone in an unsafe situation is urged to call the shelter.
