Tomorrow

Tomorrow I get to play meet the politicians. I am not looking forward to it but it is for a good cause. The local DV service, which has provided so mch support and assistance to me, missed out on some state funding recently and the manager is not happy. Given that locally the money went to a cricket club, a bridge club, the local council and the Masons I can understand why.

The DV service runs both a refuge and a resource centre (they do other things too but these are the ones I have had the most contact with. My kids and I spent ten days in the refuge last year when we were trying to find somewhere to live. It was as an indirect result of the violence I suffered in my marriage. The resource centre is the place I have had the most to do with. I have attended educational groups there, participated in a Creative Writing program, been a part of the gardening group (started to give some of us an opportunity to give something directly back to the service) and have often just hung out there when I didn't want to be at home alone.

But the resource centre has some issues. The building is old and needs some serious work. The meeting room is not a particularly nice place to be. Shade cloth acts as the windows, with plastic cafe blinds to waterproof the room, it is not air conditioned and can be stiflingly hot in the Summer and more than a little chilly in winter, and the back door is a security door, there is no wooden door to put in the hole. This allows anybody who enters the rear yard the ability to see into the room, which for a domestic violence service is both a privacy and safety concern.

The other rooms of the building are also in need of work, although they are servicable. To be honest the best thing that could happen is that the guts would be ripped out of the building and it is purpose re-built, but that isn't going to happen. The fixing up and securing of the meeting room isn't going to happen, the woodwork that needs replacing, due to either rot or white ant, isn't going to happen. Yet some 1500 women each year will continue to attend the resource centre to gain support for the domestic violence they have experienced, and in some cases are still experiencing.

So tomorrow there is a meeting with the current state member of parliament and the other major candidates for the seat (election year). And I am there to tell them why the resource centre is so important, to draw on my experiences both with domestic violence and using the resource centre to make them not just to know why it is important that the resource centre is renovated but the understand why. To make them understand that the women who attend the service would love to be able to access such things as cricket and bridge clubs but that fears for their safety, their survival, are a higher priority. I am hugely flattered that the manager of the service has such faith in me that she has asked me to participate but I am also extremely anxious because this is such an important cause. I want to do all I can to support them and give back some of the support they have given me.