“It’s safe, it’s quiet, it’s welcoming and it’s supportive.” That’s how Women’s Resources client intake worker Bozena Hall — hers is the lovely voice at the end of the phone when you call our offices — describes the newly renovated and reopened library. And while yes, there’s a full wall of books on subjects [...]
June is National Indigenous History Month, and June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada, so this month is a particularly good time to set the platitudes aside and think about what we can actually do to address the tragic reality of widespread violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. We already [...]
As we’ve noted in this space before, sex trafficking does happen here in Kawartha Lakes. Some of those who end up having to perform sex acts for money against their will have been brought here from other cities in hopes of avoiding detection. Others have been recruited from within our very midst. For a [...]
The idea that someone could force another person to undergo sexual acts for money against their will is so appalling that most of us just don’t want to think about it. But the reality is that sex trafficking does happen right here in Kawartha Lakes, and a lot of it victimizes young people, whether [...]
The story of Women’s Resources starts with the story of our shelter for women looking to escape abuse. Although we’ve grown much bigger and offer many more services now, we’d like to take a few moments to go back even before the opening of Victoria’s Shelter three decades ago. Women have experienced abuse from [...]
Would you consider it abuse if you saw a man yelling at his girlfriend? What if he called her an awful name? What if you learned that a female friend of yours had to give her partner passwords to her phone and computer, and that he frequently checked her emails, texts and social media [...]
I was 22 years old, living in Ottawa, going to Carleton University. And although I was a journalism student — my sister is the engineer in our family — I have never been able to escape the brutal reality that if the gunman had walked into my classroom, he’d have shot me, probably while [...]
When you’re a woman coping with the fallout from an abusive situation, just making ends meet can take all your energy. And when the holidays come along, the idea of finding extra money for Christmas gifts can be crushing. That’s where two special seasonal initiatives come in: our Elf Express and sponsorship programs. “The [...]
Anyone who pays any attention at all to the news is rarely surprised to see evidence of women’s oppression, but recent events have made even the most cynical take notice. In Afghanistan, weeks of fear and chaos have been especially devastating for women. With the ultra-religious Taliban taking control of the country in the [...]
As of the time this blog post was written, women had won the first 13 Canadian medals at the 2020 Olympics (which are being held in 2021 because of the pandemic). From swimming to rowing to judo, softball and weightlifting, women kept up the pace set at the last Summer Olympics, when they won [...]
