Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

Guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

As part of the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ange the World cam­paign, Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al (SI) Es­per­ance an­swered the Unit­ed Na­tions’ call to “UNiTE! Ac­tivism to end vi­o­lence against women and girls”. They re­spond­ed by rais­ing aware­ness about vi­o­lence against women and girls, ad­vo­cat­ing for women’s rights, and tak­ing pos­i­tive ac­tion. 

SI Es­per­ance host­ed The Or­ange Café with fea­tured speak­er Oni­ka Mars, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor and founder of Women of Sub­stance in To­ba­go. She gave a heart-wrench­ing ac­count of her ex­pe­ri­ence as a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor that al­lowed all at­ten­dees to gain a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the jour­ney of a sur­vivor. Oni­ka’s jour­ney from a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor to the founder of Shangri La, a Safe Space in To­ba­go, served as a tes­ta­ment to the strength of the hu­man spir­it.

Host­ing The Or­ange Café was the club’s way of com­mem­o­rat­ing the 16 days of Ac­tivism Against Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence. The theme this year is In­vest to Pre­vent Vi­o­lence against Women and Girls.

It fo­cus­es on the im­por­tance of fi­nanc­ing dif­fer­ent pre­ven­tion strate­gies to stop vi­o­lence from oc­cur­ring in the first place. The event held was to pro­mote sup­port for do­mes­tic vic­tims and to cre­ate greater aware­ness among mem­bers and oth­er in­ter­est­ed per­sons.

Do not be a by­stander

At the Or­ange Café, an ap­peal was made to every­one present, in­clud­ing the men, to be an al­ly and to take a stand pub­licly against this stain on our so­ci­ety. Many women suf­fer in si­lence due to stig­ma, shame and an in­abil­i­ty to sur­vive fi­nan­cial­ly. Of­ten we do not sus­pect abuse, and even when we do, we do noth­ing. Each of us has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to step up to help cre­ate a cul­ture of non-vi­o­lence. To tru­ly make an im­pact and re­duce the lev­el of Gen­der-based vi­o­lence in our com­mu­ni­ty, every­one should play a role. “Do not be a By­stander!” the mes­sage echoed by all the speak­ers.

Oth­er pre­sen­ters in­clud­ed Claire Guy-Al­leyne, Head of the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit of the TTPS; Mar­cus Kissoon, Gen­der and Child Ad­vo­cate; Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence; and Veron­i­ca Lan­dreth-Smith, Di­rec­tor of The Halfway House.

Imag­ine a so­ci­ety free of vi­o­lence

SI Es­per­ance sup­ports the 4 ma­jor ac­tions of The Gen­er­a­tion Equal­i­ty Ac­tion Coali­tion on Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence:-

* Strength­en­ing laws and poli­cies and in­creas­ing re­sources

* Scal­ing up ev­i­dence-dri­ven pre­ven­tion pro­gram­ming

* Scal­ing up com­pre­hen­sive, ac­ces­si­ble and qual­i­ty ser­vices for sur­vivors

* In­creas­ing sup­port and re­sources to women’s rights or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Ear­ly in 2023, mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed in an ‘Em­brace Every­one March’ with oth­er women’s or­ga­ni­za­tions around the Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, ad­vo­cat­ing for women’s rights. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Club par­tic­i­pat­ed in an Art Com­pe­ti­tion with the theme “IMAG­INE a so­ci­ety free of vi­o­lence against women and girls” for sec­ondary school girls spear­head­ed by Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al of Trinidad & To­ba­go. This ef­fec­tive­ly raised aware­ness among young peo­ple.

Six Hu­man Traf­fick­ing ban­ners were placed in strate­gic lo­ca­tions and club mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Na­tion­al Task Force Against Hu­man Traf­fick­ing event which dis­trib­uted 10,000 brochures. Aware­ness on all com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms was made pos­si­ble by mes­sag­ing on elec­tron­ic bill­boards for each of the 16 Days of Ac­tivism, dai­ly posts to the SI Es­per­ance so­cial me­dia, and phys­i­cal signs. This added to the Or­ange the World sig­nage and the bench­es paint­ed in or­ange with rel­e­vant mes­sages.

On its Face­book page, the club launched a video which com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed do­mes­tic vi­o­lence from a le­gal per­spec­tive, pre­pared by mem­bers. This was in ad­di­tion to the oth­er YouTube videos on the sub­ject, in­clud­ing the ‘Love is Kind’, and the ‘Men Who Stand Up For Women’ se­ries.

Sup­port­ing The Halfway House

The Halfway House, which was found­ed in 1986, is the first of its kind in the Caribbean of­fer­ing phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al sup­port to over 3,000 women and girls over the years. Through the fundrais­ing ef­forts of the club, SI Es­per­ance was able to con­tin­ue its sup­port with a do­na­tion of $4,000. The home is sup­port­ed by a small Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion and well-wish­ers. Bat­tered women are ac­cept­ed through place­ment by the po­lice, through 800-SAVE.

If you see some­thing, say some­thing

Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al Es­per­ance has joined the glob­al call to ac­tion to raise aware­ness about all forms of vi­o­lence against women and girls and to ad­vo­cate for change. The club urges, “If you see some­thing, hear some­thing, know some­thing, say some­thing!” Al­though the task is huge and daunt­ing, in­roads are be­ing made in aware­ness, ad­vo­ca­cy and ed­u­ca­tion. In terms of ac­tion, the mem­bers of­fer sup­port while en­abling and em­pow­er­ing.

Let’s UNiTE! to End Vi­o­lence Against Women

To re­port an in­ci­dent of fam­i­ly vi­o­lence:

800 4CTU ~ Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit,

800 SAVE ~ Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence