by Erin Murphy
YWCA Seattle | King | Snohomish

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month, and Firesteel (a collabrative partnership of eight YWCAs across Washington State) is exploring the connections between domestic violence and family homelessness. Domestic violence creates an unstable environment. Without a sense of stability and safety, you can lose your sense of home. The picture below is one of three images we created as part of our Facebook domestic violence awareness campaign.
Upon leaving an abusive relationship, a woman may have nowhere to go. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, approximately 63% of homeless women have experienced domestic violence in their adult lives. Domestic violence shelters in the Seattle area are often full and have to turn women and children away. Sadly, this is not unique to the Seattle region.
Social issues are often considered in isolation—domestic violence and homelessness are often two separate conversations. So we are hoping to spark conversation about the relationship between these two issues and raise awareness about how they connect.
We decided to talk about it over social media through a simple Facebook campaign. We created a series of graphics and are sharing one image each Monday morning in October, in hopes that the images will be shared and raise awareness. The image shown above was edited to be our primary image across social media channels, including Facebook, Google +, and Twitter.
We wanted to make sure that key community partners gave their input on our content, and so we asked the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence what messages we should prioritize. The graphic below captures one of their suggestions:
The third image below is to the point!
In addition to graphics, we created an interactive quiz. Again, we turned to experts to help inform the content, including our YWCA coworkers and a Firesteel advisor from a Salvation Army domestic violence housing program. They encouraged us to highlight the connection between economic abuse and homelessness, but we won’t say much more about it, because we’re asking you to take the quiz and tell us what you think! The quiz is available through the end of October.
The closer we can come to ending domestic violence, the closer we will be to ending family homelessness. So let’s keep talking about it – both online and offline.
Further Resources on Domestic Violence and Family Homelessness
National Alliance to End Homelessness (Domestic Violence Page)
Gates Foundation blog post on Domestic Violence Housing
National Coalition for the Homeless (Domestic Violence and Homelessness)
Erin Murphy holds a Masters of Public Administration and a Masters of International Studies. She can get pretty excited about policy advocacy, especially when conducted over new social and digital mediums. This post originally appeared on the Firesteel blog.
This post is part of the YWCA Week Without Violence™ blog carnival on issues of violence in all forms. We invite you to join the dialogue! Post your comment below, share your story on your blog or website, and follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #ywcaWWV.
I spent four years trying EVERYTHING in Online Dating, and through a huge amount of trial and error, I produced a system that I will share for you. This book will take you, step by step, through everything you need to know to double, triple or even quadruple the number of women you meet online.
I travel all around the world for work, and it used to be really lonely. Now I can go onto Tinder and have a date lined up in a new city before I even get out of the airport!
“Also, I’d be so damn tempted to wait till she falls asleep and poke ’em with something sharp.”
WOW that’d be murder!!! Either she’d die or she’d kill you or perhaps you’d kill each other in the scrap… FUNNNY
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on gamefly free trial.
Regards
I’m curious to find out what blog platform you are working with?
I’m experiencing some small security problems with my latest blog and I would like to find something more
secure. Do you have any suggestions?
Just wish to say your article is as amazing. The clarity in your post is just excellent
and i could assume you’re an expert on this subject.
Fine with your permission allow me to grab your feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post.
Thanks a million and please continue the rewarding work.
Wow! This blog looks exactly like my old one!
It’s on a entirely different topic but it has
pretty much the same page layout and design. Great choice of colors!
I am genuinely glad to glance at this website
posts which carries plenty of valuable facts,
thanks for providing these data.
Thank you, I have just been searching for information about this topic for
a long time and yours is the greatest I have discovered so far.
But, what concerning the conclusion? Are you sure about the source?
Hi there very nice site!! Man .. Excellent ..
Superb .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds additionally?
I’m glad to seek out a lot of useful information right
here within the publish, we need work out extra strategies in this regard, thanks
for sharing. . . . . .
In my opinion, ywca.org does a good job of handling issues like this. While sometimes deliberately controversial, the material posted is generally well researched and challenging.