BUILDING A HAVEN
Women’s shelter in Rexdale is helping visitors from Tanzania plan their own shelter,
Behind the doors of an unassuming west-end house, conversations have been happening that could help change the lives of at-risk and abused women 12,300 kilometres away.
Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter in Rexdale has been hosting visitors from the Tanzania-based human rights group, Kilimanjaro Women Information Exchange and Consultancy Organization (KWIECO). KWEICO’s Managing director, Elizabeth Minde, says the group has built the first shelter for abused women in Tanzania. Her visit was part of a partnership between the two organizations, a resource Minde said is desperately needed.
“Our community is highly patriarchal in nature . . . A lot of discrimination exists,” she told the Star near the end of her two-week visit. “At home, the major thing we’re dealing with is the poverty cycle — how do we help the women get out of that poverty cycle?”
Poverty, she explained, has contributed to domestic and sexual violence issues that can leave women with nowhere to go.
According to the 2010 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey, 39 per cent of women ages 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence since age 15. Ten per cent of women in the same age group reported their first sexual intercourse happened against their will and, overall, 20 per cent reported having experienced sexual violence.
Although construction of KWIECO’s shelter, located on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the town of Moshi, began in May 2015, the structure is still unfinished.
It now houses eight women and six children, just under half of Ernestine’s capacity. Minde said there simply aren’t enough resources to take in more. And, unlike Ernestine’s, the KWIECO shelter receives no funding from the federal government. It was awarded funding to set up the project by Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also receives funding from Global Affairs Canada.
“We only take those that are really desperate,” Minde said, explaining that some beds do not have sheets or mattresses, and food resources are stretched thin.
Her recent visit was a follow-up to a trip in August when Ernestine’s staff, including acting program co-ordinator Monica Amenya and facility services co-ordinator Deborah JamesSargeant, visited the KWIECO shelter to offer feedback and help develop programming. James- Sargeant said she was shocked at the number of children arriving at the shelter, alone, seeking help.
“I think that stands out most because I started at (Ernestine’s) in child and youth, so I do have a special eye, care and attention for children,” she said, also noting that poverty and a communal society where women are often dependant on male family members — sometimes their abusers — were also major issues.
“(The staff are) dealing with very difficult situations . . . Not just physical abuse, not just mental abuse, but deep, deep levels of abuse,” Amenya added, noting that the shelter only had one counsellor.
In addition to helping with longterm planning, Ernestine’s staff brought simple tools like “Healthy Relationship Bingo” and children’s toys and books to leave at the shelter.
“We really wanted to highlight in the Tanzanian context, ‘What can programming look like, even with limited resources?’ ” James-Sargeant explained.
Minde said KWIECO plans to focus on improving and refining services, such as better counselling services for women and children — something she said Ernestine’s does admirably.
She recalled one house meeting she sat in on at Ernestine’s.
“One client was very new and still very frustrated and she wasn’t sure what (to do),” she recalled. “By the time the meeting ended, she was a different person. You could see she was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.”