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Consider Giving a Helping Hand to Your Local Shelter This Holiday Season
By Liza Cooper | December 7, 2009
Monica Yant Kinney asks us to remember domestic violence survivors when considering our holiday giving.
To escape domestic violence can mean leaving your life behind. Often women flee to a shelter with little more than the clothes on their backs. According to Stephanie Price of Women Against Abuse, a shelter in the metro Philadelphia area, women have called her after being beaten and injured–even after locking themselves in a bathroom as the batterer tries to break down the door.
That means, after having shed their possessions to save their lives, they don’t have money to buy basics we take for granted. At holiday time, the women are unable to buy their children gifts for Christmas something that is very difficult for many.
The recession has only increased the pressure on shelters–the numbers of women seeking help has increased while funding has fallen. In Philadelphia, homicides related to domestic violence for the months of January through November number 36 compared to 21 for the same period last year.
Shelters look for monetary donations, gift-cards, especially for groceries and big-box retailers, and some look for in-kind donations.
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