The YW­CA of T&T launched the new face of its web site on May 26. The event, which was held at the Kapok Ho­tel, served to rein­tro­duce its key stake­hold­ers, in­clu­sive of its part­ners and mem­bers to the YW­CA. Khadi­ja James, out­reach of­fi­cer at the YW­CA, de­scribed the Web site at the launch as "a dig­i­tal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the work and pas­sion of the YW­CA in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

A key fea­ture of the new web site is the YW­CA's sig­na­ture "In Her Shoes" ex­hib­it which in­ter­ac­tive­ly show­cas­es im­ages, mes­sages and sto­ries on gen­der-based vi­o­lence. The pairs of shoes are strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned to de­pict a "walk in her shoes" in sol­i­dar­i­ty with many who suf­fer or who have lost their lives to vi­o­lence. The bags rep­re­sent the emo­tion­al strug­gle that many in vi­o­lent re­la­tion­ships ex­pe­ri­ence as they con­tem­plate leav­ing. As on­line users move through the ex­hi­bi­tion they are en­cour­aged to click on the shoes and the box­es to read the sto­ries and to click on the bags to un­der­stand why some stay. There is a mes­sage for all mem­bers of the fam­i­ly as it aims to sen­si­tise every­one that vi­o­lence is not "OK."

The new web site in­cludes a Re­source Sec­tion which al­so pro­vides in­for­ma­tion about gen­der-based vi­o­lence and or­gan­i­sa­tions that pro­vide sup­port and ser­vices. With this new web site, the YW­CA aims to con­nect with its tar­get pop­u­la­tions and raise aware­ness on the is­sues which af­fect girls, women and youth. The site is al­so ex­pect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate link­ages with var­i­ous net­works while mak­ing the pub­lic aware of the ac­tiv­i­ties and events of the YW­CA.

YW­CA of T&T pres­i­dent Keisha Cruick­shank con­grat­u­lat­ed the team who re­spond­ed to the call to cre­ate in less than one month the YW­CA's newest out­reach and ad­vo­ca­cy tool and spe­cial­ly ac­knowl­edged web­mas­ters Shel­don Blugh and Stephan James and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Avianne Cal­len­der for their in­valu­able in­put.The YW­CA of T&T cam­paigns to raise aware­ness on gen­der-based vi­o­lence, which tran­scends age, abil­i­ty, sta­tus, race, eth­nic­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al­i­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or re­li­gion.

The YW­CA of T&T recog­nis­es that men and women from all walks of life are af­fect­ed, as world­wide, as many as one in every three women has been beat­en, co­erced in­to sex, or abused in some oth­er way-most of­ten by some­one she knows be it her hus­band or an­oth­er male fam­i­ly mem­ber and that up to one in five women and one in ten men re­port ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sex­u­al abuse as chil­dren.The YW­CA of T&T ad­vo­cates for a so­ci­ety where all in our com­mu­ni­ties can live lives free of vi­o­lence.Vis­it us on­line at www.tty­w­ca.org where you can learn more and join, do­nate and vol­un­teer.