DoorwaysVA Blog

• After months of debate and opposition, the senate voted in favor of renewing the Violence Against Women Act, which includes new provisions to protect gays and lesbians, illegal immigrants, and Native American women from domestic abuse.
• The Violence Against Women Act provides protection for children, as well as women.
• In an effort to increase protection against intimate-partner violence, we must remember that domestic violence does not discriminate against race, religion, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation.
•  A family in Salt Lake describes the hardships and hope they experienced through family homelessness.

This week, Kelly Kaelin and Carmina Carper tell of their adventures as grocery volunteers

I’m not going to lie- my decision to volunteer at Doorways wasn’t completely selfless.  Carmina and I had been co-workers and friends for years, but then she left the company and I wondered how we’d maintain our relationship as our lives took different paths.  Then one hot August afternoon we found ourselves looking for relief from the heat at the Arlington County Fair. As we browsed the aisles of the indoor (and air-conditioned) craft fair, we came upon the Doorways table. We both really liked the mission of Doorways and thought we’d each find something we could contribute. Shopping seemed relatively easy, something we could commit to at least once a month and could do “together” Perfect!

Don’t let anyone tell you that shopping is an easy task. While we review the shopping list each week, we have to calculate how many shopping carts we’ll need based on how many gallons of milk we’ll have to haul, we wonder if this will be the week we’ll beat the record of having more than 20lbs of bananas to bag and we brace ourselves for the frozen food section. Testing our knowledge of Giant aisles, we try to get everything we need without having to backtrack.  Yes, shopping for Doorways has helped us develop valuable skills!

When we return to the Family Home, it’s great to see the families that we’re there to support.  We laugh when the kids compete to see who can carry in the most bags at one time. Once we even re-bagged groceries – placing a single can in a plastic bag so a 2 year old could feel accomplished carrying in the groceries.  It’s bittersweet to see the same children each month;  we love to see the same faces and have them greet us at the door, and it is a little sad when they are no longer there.  However, we know that the Family Home is temporary and success means moving on to a more permanent solution.

Over three years later, the one constant for us is that we commit to shopping for Doorways each month. We’re unabashedly proud of our December 2010 Volunteers of the Month award and boast about how we’re the longest running shopping volunteers at the Family Home.  And our involvement doesn’t end with shopping. We have each gotten our companies involved by hosting fundraisers and soliciting donations.  Doorways continues to give us so much more than we feel we’ve given. We look forward to reaching our 4^th year of volunteer service – and maintaining our shopping volunteer record!

This week we hear from Jessica Ferro, a Safehouse volunteer.

Small stepping stones leading up to a welcoming front door.  That’s what I think of when I explain how Doorways became a part of my life. After living in Arlington for a few years, I began to miss the sense of community I had growing up in a small New England town. I finally had the time to volunteer on a regular basis and so I looked at local organizations. As an alumna of a women’s college, I’ve always been passionate about women’s rights and issues. Doorways seemed like a perfect fit.

One of the most important stepping stones is my experience working with Ukrainian women during my Peace Corps service. Through broken Russian and English, I became friends with several of the women who were also teachers in the high school where I worked. As we know, domestic violence is in every culture. In Ukraine it is more hidden than here in the U.S as it’s still talked about in hushed voices and considered a private family matter.

Larisa was my colleague and my Russian tutor. She amazed me with her ability to speak English even though I was the first native speaker she had ever met. I don’t remember how it got brought up, but a few times she made passing remarks about how her husband had hurt her. Due to the language barrier, it was hard for me to tell exactly what she meant but after observing her for awhile I highly suspected she was a survivor of domestic violence. I regret not fully reaching out to her but I felt helpless. I was the lone foreigner in a small town and I lacked fluency to find out what resources, if any, were available for her. My experience with Larisa inspired me to find way to reach out to survivors of domestic violence.

The training that Doorways has provided me has given me the tools to not only help the women during my Safehouse shifts, but to help women like Larisa wherever I go in my life. She is my inspiration to speak up and reach out no matter how helpless I might feel.