End relationship violence

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To the Editor:

Re: The Park and Recreation Commission approval in letting the Kent Land Trust use its logo on publicity for an Oct. 19 hike to raise awareness about domestic violence.

As the new executive director of Project SAGE, I’d like to expand on Kathryn Boughton’s coverage of the Sept. 16 Park and Recreation Commission meeting where they approved the use of their logo on the publicity for the Oct. 19t “Take Back the Hike” happening in collaboration with the Kent Land Trust. 

To clarify for some folks who may not remember or know our history: In 1979 several local women identified the need for services for women experiencing domestic violence. Forty-five years later, we carry the torch forward as a community-focused organization dedicated to creating social change to end interpersonal relationship violence. We envision a world where everyone can be themselves and everyone can have healthy relationships.

As Commission chair, Rufus P. de Rham pointed out in the meeting, Project Sage is all about awareness of domestic violence.

For those who may not know, domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence (DV) can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological among other means of coercive control. DV includes actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner or interpersonal relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

Our programs, from our client services to our community engagement to our prevention education, are all directly focused on ending domestic violence in its many forms and supporting the communities of the Northwest Corner in building safer and healthier relationships.

Last year, Project SAGE provided the following: 

• Emergency shelter for 28 clients, collectively over 1,400 nights of shelter
• Direct Services to approximately 800 adult and youth clients
• Support and advocacy for 558 victims of family violence in Criminal and Civil Court
• Responses to 1,884 hotline crisis requests
• Prevention education workshops that meet Connecticut education standards in all grades 6-12 classrooms in Region 1 schools
• 46 workshops/trainings for adults, with attendance of more than 400 people
• 317 prevention education workshops for children and teens in local schools and daycare programs
• Awareness-raising materials distributed to the community via 87 Main Street Partner businesses and 16 tabling events throughout our service area.

I think we can all agree our community is safer and healthier the more awareness, education, training and service is provided around domestic violence prevention.

To that end, please join Project SAGE at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 1 for our annual Vigil, where we will honor those who lost their lives to Domestic Violence in Connecticut in 2023 and reaffirm our dedication to ending relationship violence in Northwest Corner. You can find out more about the free event at https://project-sage.org/events-listing/annual-community-vigil 

Kristen van Ginhoven

Executive Director, Project SAGE

Lakeville

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