By Naomi Carniol
You can use the Internet to book a hotel room halfway across the world or send flowers to a friend in another city. But to women fleeing abuse, the web is more than a digital shopping mall. It’s a lifeline.
Ten years ago, at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women member states adopted a plan of action with agreements in 12 priority areas, including violence against women.
In Canada, one in four women will experience violence at the hands of an intimate partner, according to Shelternet, one of the leading online resources for women living with violence in Canada.
Launched in 2002, Shelternet’s website has a clickable map that allows women to find phone numbers for shelters across the country.
The site also explains what it’s like to stay at a women’s shelter. And there are tips for how to make a safe escape from one’s home. The information is in French and English, but will soon be available in eight other languages.
“We’re increasing the access of information to abused women,” says Jan Richardson, Shelternet’s managing director. “There’s information about what is abuse, that you’re not alone . . . and that there is help available for you 24 hours a day and that’s your local shelter in your local community.”
The website gets about 5,500 visitors a month. Research shows more and more women are using the Internet so it’s not surprising that abused women are turning to the web for help, Richardson says.
For a woman living with violence, there are risks in using the Internet. An abusive husband could monitor his wife’s web-activity, so Shelternet posts instructions explaining how to hide which websites you visit.
Providing information to abused women is only half of Shelternet’s online activity. The website also helps women’s shelters increase their Internet presence by providing a template where other shelters in Canada can build their own websites.
“If you have basic word-processing capabilities, you can do it,” Richardson says.
After a shelter creates a website, Shelternet hosts the site for free.
While Shelternet is an important resource, many shelters in Canada built their websites independently.
The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, which offers refuge for battered women, built its website in the early 1990s.
It’s been revamped at least twice, staff member Suzanne Jay says. The organization sees the web as a way of communicating with women who have experienced violence.
“It allows us to deliver some practical information and give women a way to assess whether they’d like to be in contact with us,” Jay says.
Though more shelters are going online, not all their websites target women fleeing abuse.
“Our target audience are women in the community in general,” says Lyn Barrett, executive director of Bryony House in Halifax.
“The majority of women who come into our shelter aren’t coming through the web.”
Bryony House uses its website for fundraising. “It’s amazing. Once a week someone will start pursuing the concept of donation based on having visited the website,” Barrett says.
It’s a similar situation for Ottawa’s Nelson House. Since launching a website four years ago, more people have contacted the shelter to donate, executive director Renée Parent says.
“We’re trying to update it so people can do cash donations through the website.”
Nellie’s, a shelter in Toronto, has already taken that step. The shelter’s website has a link to a charity website so visitors can donate online.
The website also helps Nellie’s recruit volunteers.
A section on the site describes different volunteer positions, from fundraising to running programs for women in the shelter. And the site also helps with outreach work.
“Initially, we didn’t view it as a tool for women fleeing violence. It really was promotional,” executive director Cindy Cowan says.
But staff at the shelter realized many of the website’s visitors were women living with violence.
“We have seen an increase in the number of women seeking support through email,” Cowan says.
Eventually, more shelters will develop websites, Cowan predicts.
“I think shelters not being online is really a function of it taking time and resources to be able to do it. With constant updating, you need to have folks in place to be able to respond to that, she says.”
Ottawa’s Interval House provides proof of Cowan’s theory. The shelter doesn’t have a website.
“It’s not something we’ve had the resources to make happen,” executive director Jolanta Scott-Parker says. But she adds, “We do have plans to make one.”