Cornerstone is an organization that everyone can support. Dedicated to helping women suffering from domestic violence – to spell that out, that’s a man beating his wife – they do get some government money but not enough. So they have fundraisers and their major one is the event called “Walk a mile in her shoes” which is being held in Cobourg at the Harvest festival on King Street on Saturday September 28. While it started with a group of men wearing red high heel shoes, Cornerstone is now encouraging anyone to participate wearing any kind of shoes although they do have 100 red shoes you can borrow – of all sizes. At the Committee of the Whole Council meeting on Monday night, Janelle Eisler presented some facts about Cornerstone and asked all councillors to participate.
To participate, sign up at the Cornerstone web site (link below) and pay a participation fee (minimum $20 for adults and $10 for youth 18 and under); or if you are like me, you can simply sponsor a participant by signing up to a pledge or just donate.
This is the 12th year that this event has been held in Cobourg and this year it will also happen in Brighton at their Apple Fest on the next day – September 29. It started out as a small group of local men walking in red high heeled shoes through Northumberland Mall and has grown to be one of Cornerstone’s largest fundraisers raising over $40,000 in 2018. They are targeting 150 participants this year.
But what exactly does Cornerstone do?
They do more than simply provide a “safe house” (my term) with 21 beds – here is their list:
Residential
- Shelter & Crisis Counselling
- 24 Hour Support Line
- Transitional and housing support
Community
- Resource centre
- Women’s Counselling: individual and group
- Family Court Support
- HomeShare Program
- Child & Youth Counselling in schools
- Child Witness Program
- Prevention
Cornerstone is quite transparent about their funding (go here for full financial statements) but I made a quick summary of their revenue for the year ending March 31, 2019 :
| Provincial funding | $1,110K |
| United Way | $40K |
| Grants | $287K |
| Donations and Fundraising | $301K |
| Other | $150K |
| Total | $1,888K |
Most of the expenses (74%) are salaries and benefits.
Other fund raising events include the Summer Social at the Beach Canteen (courtyard) on July 26 and 27 – 5:00 to 10:00 pm
Below left is a chart that Janelle presented; at right are Councillors Aaron Burchat and Adam Bureau with Janelle (Aaron and Adam attended a launch of the Walk a Mile event earlier on Monday.)
Links
Print Article:
to Flabbergasted – just be thankful that we have John Draper’s blog – keeping us informed in all manner of things – we all – (readers) owe him a ton of thanks for his daily efforts
“to spell that out, that’s a man beating his wife”
I just can’t, with this. Congratulations, in spelling out the meaning of “domestic violence” you’ve spelled out one single specific kind of myriad kinds of domestic violence that impact women, men, and children, while managing to basically erase all of the rest in one fell swoop. Bravo sir.
But it got your attention didn’t it. Thanks for expanding the definition – but I think the worst type is physical violence.
Domestic violence is violence that occurs, as you might glean from the name, in the domicile. Whether the victim is a man, woman or child, whether the perpetrator is a man, woman, or child, whether that violence is physical, or emotional. Reducing the meaning of “Domestic Violence” to “A man beats his wife” is doing actual harm to anybody outside that paradigm who wants their abuse to be taken seriously by anybody.
So how, specifically, would you have changed Mr. Draper’s report? And what positive suggestions do you, sir or madam, have to contribute to this issue