For Immediate Release

MEDIA RELEASE

Anniversary Brings Name Change for First Women’s Refuge

Christchurch Women’s Refuge has chosen its 40th anniversary year to announce a change of name to Aviva.

As the first refuge to be established in New Zealand, the agency decided that a new name would better reflect its widening range of services and be more relevant to its expanded client base, which now includes men as well as women and children.

“The name Aviva expresses the spirit of potential, action and life, which that we wish to embody and express to our clients and communities” says CEO Nicola Woodward. “We passionately believe that overcoming family violence is possible for everyone, with the right support, and this new name expresses this belief more clearly.”

In 2012 the agency undertook extensive research which found that while the word ‘refuge’ has very strong positive associations with safety for women, the agency name ‘Christchurch Women's Refuge’ didn’t represent the broad range of services the agency now offers or the people they are offered to. Some women even indicated that they had been reluctant to access refuge services, believing that the agency only dealt with cases of physical violence or that accessing the agency’s support would mean they had to leave their relationship or enter a Safe House. Research also confirmed that the name led many people to assume that all the agency offered was a physical refuge (only 10% of clients actually use the Safe House) and that men did not find the name Christchurch Women's Refuge approachable or relevant to them.

“We recognised that if our current name has limited our relevance or accessibility to women and children we needed to change. ” says Woodward. “And if we seemed unapproachable to some women, then we certainly won’t be accessible to men, who we also now support to overcome violence and move towards violence-free lives. The reality is that we’ve grown far beyond the single service of a literal refuge at times of crisis; we now support everyone who needs it, at any point of their journey. Our new brand Aviva gives us a new identity that is more approachable for all the people we exist to support, and its more representative of where we are in 2013 and where we are going.”

Aviva will honour the name and legacy of Christchurch Women's Refuge by retaining it for the service it first provided – the Safe House.

The name change comes just one week before the agency’s street appeal, which this year will be held on May 17 and Saturday 18 through Christchurch, Rangiora, Kaiapoi and Rolleston. The appeal has moved from July to now fall in the same week as the International Day of the Family. “While we always hold the safety of women and children as paramount, in the past few years we have been moving more towards a whole of family focus” says
Woodward. “Our new brand reflects this more effectively, so it also made sense to move our appeal to that same family-centred space.”

The rebrand has been achieved largely thanks to sponsorship, particularly that of Strategy Design & Advertising, as their way of making family violence – and overcoming it – more visible in our community. “As a small charity we always struggle for funds” says Woodward. “By taking us on as a charitable client, Strategy have not only given us a wonderful new brand to take us forward for many years, but we’ve been able to achieve all this without having to divert funds from frontline service to clients.”

Contact Aviva at www.avivafamilies.org.nz or by calling 0800 AVIVA NOW (0800 28482 669), free phone 24-hours a day. All calls to the Christchurch Women's Refuge 0800 1 REFUGE or ReachOut 0800 REACH OUT lines will be diverted to this number.

ENDS

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