Spring/Summer 2018
June 6, 2018
Highlights from the 24th Annual Ernestine Affair
The 24th Annual Ernestine Affair took place on April 11th at the Carlu. This year’s event was incredibly successful with its goals to support the women and children at Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter and create conversations about gender-based violence.

This past year marked a momentous year for social change with the success of Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement, and our event guests engaged with challenging issues faced by women and children in our communities, and around the world, but it didn’t just stop there.

Our event supporters weren’t just part of the conversation - they were part of the change. 

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Featuring: Settlement Program
As we increasingly welcome more newcomers to Canada, we at Ernestine’s see the need to care for families who require specialized support systems to help them find safety. Violence against women is a huge problem in Canada, and across the world, and sadly, women and children who experience compounded forms of oppression, like racism, ageism, and classism, are even more vulnerable to violence. That’s how women and children who have precarious citizenship can often experience violence, because their abusers are often their immigration sponsors, and take advantage of this dependency. The abuser’s threat to cut that sponsorship is used to control and isolate women, and when you’re a newcomer who may not speak English or have ties to family or community who can help, your safety and health are in incredible danger.

At Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter, we offer safe shelter for these families, and they often stay with us for periods of more than a year, because the complexity of issues faced by these families is staggering. That’s why we introduced the Settlement Program last year, as part of our Housing and Legal Program.

#DYK about the SafePet Program?
There are many reasons women stay with abusive partners, and oftentimes it is because their abuser has threatened to harm or kill the family pet, and used this threat as leverage to trap women in these relationships.

Nearly 90% of domestic violence survivors in shelters across Canada had their pet brutalized or killed by an abusive partner. Our SafePet Program helps to temporarily re-home pets so that families can access safety without having to worry about their beloved pets being injured or killed.
MAKE A DONATION
I f you would like to give a gift to Ernestine's Women's Shelter, please click here