This year marks 50 years since Nellie’s first opened its doors — and while it’s bittersweet for an organization like ours to be just as necessary now as it was in 1973, there’s still so much to celebrate in the progress we’re making towards a world free of gender-based violence.
We’re continuing to focus on delivering empowerment and prevention programs that disrupt the cycle of violence. From December 2022 through March 2023, Nellie’s reached a total of 297 unique participants through Rock and Water (an anti-bullying program aimed at children) and our empowerment self-defense (ESD) programs. It’s been inspiring to see how these programs are taking off and becoming highly sought after by other organizations in our community — the requests for ESD workshops have been so high over the past few months that we’ve now trained two more instructors to help meet the growing demand. We’re also planning on piloting a writing workshop created by the Voices and Faces Project, in order to add an opportunity for internal reflection to our empowerment offerings. We’re really excited to see how this new workshop will help the women at Nellie’s on their journey to recovery.
Through our Transitional Housing Program, we continue to focus on finding ways to move women and their children out of the shelter and into safe, affordable housing — and the growth and incredible leadership this program has seen in the past year has been staggering. Since I started at Nellie’s three and a half years ago, our housing staff has increased by 40%. I’m proud to see this team’s growth, and their ability to evolve in order to meet the needs of our community. The complexities around gender-based violence are so much greater now than they were 50 years ago. From mental health issues, to addiction and trauma, the needs of our clients are often compounded, but I feel confident in our team’s expertise when they’re out in the community providing our services to those who need them most.
For the first time ever, Nellie’s is also starting to explore cost recovery programs. Presently, we don’t have a dedicated funder for our empowerment programs, so all costs associated with running these sessions for community organizations, we need to raise through fund development. This summer, however, four of the organizations that we are running ESD programs with are actually paying for their sessions. We believe that these essential trainings should be accessible to all, so this flexible payment structure has only a nominal fee that helps to cover our travel costs and our time. Again, this is for cost recovery, not for profit — but this is hugely helpful for the viability and longevity of our organization until we can obtain dedicated funding for this program. Investing in prevention and disrupting the cycle of violence is crucial if we’re to build a world free of gender-based violence — the return on this investment is going to be monumental.
As we look forward to the next 50 years, I’m really proud to witness the innovation of Nellie’s. Over the past five decades, we’ve primarily been known for the shelter and support we provide to women and their children fleeing violence, trauma, and homelessness — and while these crisis services will always be a core priority, we’re excited to continue the break the mold and help to stem the flow of violence on a systemic level through empowerment and prevention. Thank you for your generous, continuing support; it is what makes everything we do possible.
Jyoti Singh
Executive Director
