Message From Our President and CEO
Summer 2010
Recently I was catching up on my email when one from a Child & Family Service domestic abuse shelter manager caught my eye. The subject line was: “A Youngest Donor” and the email read:
“Aloha. I had to share this with you. Today one of our client’s children (9 years old) came to me to tell me she had a donation for the Shelter. Then she opened her piggy bank and pulled out $4.31 that she had been saving since her family arrived at the shelter. Her Mom is so very proud of her for giving back.”
Our shelter manager closed with:
“This story helps me remember what we do each day is making a difference.”
People who work in the area of domestic violence are exposed to some unimaginably ugly human behavior. They see women who leave the shelter too soon and are murdered by their abuser. They see women go back to the abuser only to return to the shelter after a subsequent beating. They see children who either act out the abuse or blame themselves for it. They see adolescents in the shelter who are being beaten in a teen dating relationship that repeats the generational cycle of domestic violence. They see other fearful family members advising victims to simply stay and take the abuse. And because the perpetrator often controls all of the family finances and does not allow the victim to work they see victims of domestic violence come to our shelters with literally just the clothes on their backs. They have no income and often have no job history.
But they have also seen families in which the perpetrator gets help; takes responsibility for his actions and stops the violence. The family can then be preserved and heal. They have also seen victims leave their abusers. With safety plans in place and new job skills they have seen women build new lives for themselves and their children; lives free from violence.
While people who work in this area often suffer from burnout, or move to less stressful careers, at Child & Family Service we are blessed with many staff who have been providing counseling and support to victims of domestic violence and their children for 15-20 years! Many of our staff are survivors of domestic violence themselves and are “giving back” by working to help other victims to become survivors.
Mahalo nui loa to our “youngest donor” whose simple action speaks for her mother; all of the families we serve in our shelters; all of our donors whose financial, in-kind contributions and time we could not live without; and my heroes: the employees of Child & Family Service who work in our shelters. With your support and commitment to help victims of domestic violence we keep alive the dream of the day when we can say that domestic violence has ended.
With warm Aloha,
Howard Garval
