PRESS RELEASE

More women and families escaping domestic violence are finding a safe home since the Eastern Refuge Society (ERS) increased its capacity.

Manager Rhonda Cox-Nissen says that, because of a growing demand for help from vulnerable women and children, ERS now has two safe houses in East Auckland.

“We receive families from across the entire Auckland region,” she says, “but we have been borrowing household items from other refuges and taken donations just to keep operating.”

However, ERS has just had confirmed funding of $130,000 from ASB Community Trust, which will help buy household furniture, office equipment and help with running costs.

Announcing the grant this week, ASB Community Trust CEO Jennifer Gill said ERS is an important agent in empowering women and children, giving them choices so they can make the transition to independence.

“Our Trust also wants to address social issues,” she says. “We want to make our communities better places for everyone to live, particularly through supporting women and their families, children and young people.”

In the same funding round the Trust made a grant of $139,583 to the Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation. Another agency dealing with social issues, the Refugees as Survivors New Zealand Trust (RASNZ) was given a $315,000 ASBCT grant towards its mobile community health team.

The team will strengthen links between refugees and health services and create a small, highly mobile specialist community mental health unit for the Auckland region.

Refugees as Survivors CEO Gary Poole says their core work is trauma repair and helping UN refugees settle successfully in New Zealand.

“This greatly appreciated assistance from the ASBCT will allow refugee link workers to build capacity and achieve positive outcomes for their own communities,” he says.

Also in South Auckland, Alzheimers Society Counties Manukau gained a $89,951 ASBCT grant toward its running costs and a new programme providing recreational activity opportunities for people with early onset dementia.

Among the other 46 ASBCT grants decided on in the latest funding round was $113,000 for Glen Innes Adult Literacy; $35,640 for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People and $63,726 for Waitakere Adult Literacy.

ENDS

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