Last week, Nellie’s was invited to join the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses’ (OAITH) meeting with Jarmila Lajacakova, Advisor for Human and Minority Rights, and Lucia Duranova, Domestic Affairs Officer, both from the Office of the President of the Slovak Republic, to share knowledge on our work to end gender-based violence. Here’s what executive director Jyoti Singh has to say about this incredible opportunity:

It was an extreme honour to meet with Jarmila and Lucia, the delegation from the Slovak Republic. As vice president of the OAITH board of directors, I relished the opportunity to learn about the work being done by the Slovak Republic government, as well as our sister agencies across Canada, to end gender-based violence in our communities. Representatives from The Redwood, Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, WomenatthecentrE, White Ribbon and LEAF (Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund), all shared knowledge and experiences in our work to fight gender-based violence. The meeting was an amazing opportunity for collaboration, and we hope that it helped to lay the foundation for international cooperation to end gender-based violence across the globe.

The session also allowed me the opportunity to speak about the excellent work we do at Nellie’s. We were able to share our philosophy that although we operate a crisis shelter, it’s our work to disrupt the cycle of violence that truly fuels us forward. Due to the way that we receive funding from the government, our business is crisis — but should it be? Crisis still has a role, unfortunately, but we need to focus on shifting our efforts towards prevention.

The saddest realization to come out of our meeting was that while the characters may change, the essential stories of GBV are similar around the world regardless of age, ethnicity, religion, political stripe, or culture. Women are being killed all around the world.

Here in Ontario, OAITH does the hard work of tracking the number of femicides each month in our province. The association is relentless in its efforts to ensure the women whose lives are stolen by GBV are represented, and they aren’t just a quick blip on the news headlines only to soon be forgotten.

The delegation from the Slovak Republic met with us to learn more about this important work and the methodology used. While I’m proud to support OAITH in its work, it disheartened me that counting femicides is a task that needs to continue to grow. The fact that we need to increase our expertise in counting murdered women is extremely distressing.

Near the end of our meeting, in my role as vice-president of the board for OAITH, I had the immense pleasure of presenting the delegation with a set of Wrapped in Courage scarves as a sign of solidarity in our continued work to address GBV across borders. We were promised that a scarf would be delivered to Zuzana Čaputová, the president of the Slovak Republic, and we look forward to seeing her “wrapped in courage”.