Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

“We are liv­ing in chal­leng­ing times. Times of in­se­cu­ri­ty, in­equal­i­ties and vi­o­lence. But those who are as­so­ci­at­ed with and sup­port the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, re­tain our hope and our op­ti­mism. This is not a naive op­ti­mism, but one root­ed in our be­lief that change, and trans­for­ma­tion are pos­si­ble if we all strive to treat each oth­er with re­spect, with dig­ni­ty and with kind­ness.”

- Rober­ta Clarke, Pres­i­dent of CADV

Each year the Unit­ed Na­tions In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Peace (IDP) is ob­served in Sep­tem­ber.

Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res said: “Peace is need­ed to­day more than ever. Vi­o­lence, war and con­flict are un­leash­ing dev­as­ta­tion, pover­ty, and hunger, and dri­ving tens of mil­lions of peo­ple from their homes. Cli­mate chaos is all around. And even peace­ful coun­tries are gripped by gap­ing in­equal­i­ties.”

As we nav­i­gate these chal­leng­ing times, WE place the spot­light on a for­mi­da­ble group that con­sis­tent­ly fos­ter the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of re­duc­ing in­equal­i­ties and in­jus­tices, pro­mot­ing peace, equal­i­ty and re­spect in fam­i­lies.

The Coali­tion against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence

Born out of a vi­sion by its founders Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att and Rad­hi­ca Saith, the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) was es­tab­lished in 1988 to ad­vo­cate for a com­pre­hen­sive, whole of so­ci­ety ap­proach to pre­vent such vi­o­lence and abuse and to pro­vide ser­vices for peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly af­fect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

CADV grew out of the ef­forts of its founders who al­so es­tab­lished the first two shel­ters in the coun­try. These two safe hous­es, the Home for Bat­tered Women and The Shel­ter, con­tin­ue to pro­vide safe refuge and es­sen­tial ser­vices for sur­vivors of DV to­day.

More than three decades lat­er, CADV has suc­cess­ful­ly built part­ner­ships among lo­cal civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, the pri­vate sec­tor, the gov­ern­men­tal sec­tor, the jus­tice sys­tem, and oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies that are in­volved in re­spond­ing to and pre­vent­ing vi­o­lence against women.

The mis­sion of CADV, whose mem­ber­ship in­cludes shel­ters, chil­dren’s homes, and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions work­ing to end all forms of gen­der- based vi­o­lence, is to en­sure that chil­dren, women and men in Trinidad and To­ba­go live in an en­vi­ron­ment free from phys­i­cal,emo­tion­al, sex­u­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal vi­o­lence.

The role of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion

CADV recog­nis­es that be­hav­iour change is cru­cial to end­ing the cy­cle of vi­o­lence. As such, the or­ga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues to en­gage with schools, com­mu­ni­ties, state agen­cies, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and the cor­po­rate sec­tor to sen­si­tise on the harm­ful con­se­quences of DV. More im­por­tant­ly, CADV’s pre­ven­tion pro­gramme al­so aims to en­cour­age all sec­tors of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion to un­der­stand that they have a role in elim­i­nat­ing DV.

In the past years, CADV in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in sev­er­al ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paigns which in­clud­ed a “Man to Man” se­ries and a doc­u­men­tary en­ti­tled “Tri­umph over Trau­ma” which fea­tured sur­vivor sto­ries.

In 2021, six videos were pro­duced util­is­ing pup­pets to ed­u­cate chil­dren about DV. Dur­ing this same year, CADV al­so pi­lot­ed its “First Time, Last Time” project which tar­get­ed young adults in pro­mot­ing healthy re­la­tion­ships. In 2022, CADV worked with pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools on a wall mur­al project to en­cour­age peace and re­spect.

In the last year, CADV pro­vid­ed 550 free coun­selling ses­sions and 46 le­gal con­sul­ta­tions to 141 clients. Through its pre­ven­tion pro­gramme, 16 com­mu­ni­ties were im­pact­ed, and in­clud­ed five pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

How can you get in­volved?

The com­mit­ted vol­un­teers of CADV are in­vest­ed in mak­ing pos­i­tive change in com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence. Any­one can be­come a vol­un­teer. CADV pro­vides free train­ing and aligns tasks suit­able to your ex­per­tise and com­mit­ment. All of the vol­un­teers are trained in-house by their qual­i­fied staff.

One of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s up­com­ing ac­tiv­i­ties is a Walk/Run around the Queens Park

Sa­van­nah. This Sa­van­nah Lap event will take place on Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 16. The event aims to pro­mote ze­ro tol­er­ance for fam­i­ly vi­o­lence and give a space for any­one in­ter­est­ed to add their sup­port and voice to send the mes­sage: “Let’s take steps to pro­mote peace, equal­i­ty and re­spect in fam­i­lies.”

Please feel free to con­tact CADV’s

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh about reg­is­ter­ing for the event

and any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

Phone:324-8606/739-6473 Email: cad­vtt@gmail.com

Face­book: T&T Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence

Web­site: coali­tion­a­gain­st­do­mes­ticvi­o­lence.org