Women’s Initiatives
The City of Alexandria is committed to a comprehensive and strategic approach to addressing needs specific to women and to LGBTQ people. This commitment can be seen in the many City programs and services targeted to these populations and in the active advisory bodies for women’s issues and LGBTQ issues, including the Commission for Women, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ Advisory Board. The City also has staff charged with coordinating Women’s Initiatives and an LGBTQ program coordinator.
Specific Initiatives:
Contacts
Women's Events & Awareness Months
MARCH- Women's History Month
APRIL- Sexual Assault Awareness & Women & Girls' Wellness Month
MAY- Teen Pregnancy Prevention Awareness Month
OCTOBER- Breast Cancer Awareness Month & Domestic Violence Awareness Month
DECEMBER
Clothesline Project
Every year, the Domestic Violence Program exhibits The Clothesline Project in the community during Sexual Assault Awareness Month (April) and Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October). The vividly decorated t-shirts are strung on a clothesline to bear witness to violence against women and their strength to survive.
The Clothesline Project began in 1990 when members of the Cape Cod Women's Agenda hung a clothesline across the village green in Hyannis, Massachusetts with 31 shirts decorated by survivors of assault, rape and incest. Women viewing the clothesline came forward to create shirts of their own and the line kept growing. Since the first display, The Clothesline Project has grown through cooperation with schools, universities, State Houses, shopping malls, churches and women's events. An estimated 35,000-50,000 shirts have been made.
"Doing the laundry has always been considered women's work and in the days of close-knit neighborhoods, women often exchanged information over backyard fences while hanging their clothes out to dry," said Carol A. Chichetto of East Dennis, MA, quoted from www.now.org, the NOW organization website. "The concept is simple. Let each woman tell her own story in her own unique way and hang it out for all to see. It was and is a way of airing society's dirty laundry."
Creating opportunities for people to learn and speak openly about sexual and domestic violence is a main goal of the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault programs. Twice yearly, the programs host t-shirt making nights where survivors and their friends and family are invited to create a t-shirt that represents their experience.
Call Geneva Fuentes at 703.746.4911 if you are interested in making a t-shirt and participating in this awareness event.
Click here to view an online clothesline display.
Children's Holiday Party
Every year the Alexandria Office on Women organizes a Holiday Party for children and mothers who have been recently served by our Domestic Violence Program. At the party, the families can reunite with past shelter friends and staff, eat, and take pictures with Santa Claus, among other events. Each mother and child also receives a bag of gifts to wrap and place under their own tree on Christmas Day. Over one hundred families look forward to this exciting event annually, and our community's generosity is what makes it such a success.
This year's Children's Holiday Party will be held on December 16, 2011. If you would like to participate in the party this year, we have a gift suggestion list for ideas. If ou wish to donate children's toys or other gifts, please provide newly purchased, unwrapped items. We will provide each mother with wrapping paper to personalize each child's gift.
We are also requesting gift certificates to local stores in denominations of $25.00. This way, each woman will have the opportunity to purchase something special for herself or her children.
We are accepting donations now at the Office on Women, located at 421 King Street, Suite 400, Alexandria. The office is open from 8 am until 5 pm, Monday through Friday, except on holidays. We are also available to pick up your donations if you are unable to bring them to our office. The deadline for delivery or pick-up of unwrapped gift donations is December 13, 2011.
If you need help deciding what to purchase, or if you have any other questions about donating for this event, please call Shannon or Stephanie at 703-746-4911. We would be happy to assist you in any way we can. Thank you so very much for helping to make this a great day for the children and families we serve.
Fifteenth Annual Women's Holiday Art Show
Take a break from crowded malls and retail stores and join creative women artists on Sunday, December 9, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Charles Houston Recreation Center, located at 901 Wythe Street, for a relaxing afternoon of art, fun, women and wine sponsored by the Commission for Women and the Friends of the Commission for Women. Find just the right gifts for everyone on your list -- and something wonderful for yourself. Over 30 exhibitors will display pottery, handmade clothing, scarves, purses, jewelry, crafts and much, much more! Complimentary refreshments will be served, and raffle drawings will be held throughout the event. Please bring a new toy or gift card for the annual Battered Women’s Shelter Children’s Holiday Party. Proceeds will benefit Alexandria Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault programs in Alexandria.
If you are interested in being a vendor please contact Joan Dodaro at dodaro2@comcast.net. Deadline for vendors is November 5.
For more information, please contact Sarah Watson at 703.746.3123 or via email at sarah.watson@alexandriava.gov.
The Alexandria Domestic Violence Program needs volunteers aged 18 and up to help distribute educational and public awareness materials. Volunteers are given a list of locations in the City of Alexandria and can go at their own pace. Please call Jen Clayton at 703.746.4911 or email at jen.clayton@alexandriava.gov.
The Domestic Violence Program and Inova Alexandria Hospital commemorate Domestic Violence Awareness Month at the Seventh Annual "Health Cares About Domestic Violence Day" on October 13, 2011, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the Atrium at Inova Alexandria Hospital, 4320 Seminary Road. Hospital personnel and visitors learn what they can do to detect domestic violence and how to respond and assist victims.
Salute to Women Awards
The Alexandria Commission for Women will be holding its 33rd Annual Salute to Women Awards Banquet on March 18 at The Westin Hotel in Alexandria. Proceeds from the event support the Alexandria's Sexual Assault Center. The Sexual Assault Center offers services for sexual assault, survivors and their family and friends, sexual harassment victims, and women and men of any age, English or non-English speaking. Tickets for the banquet are $85 and can be purchased beginning in late February. For questions about nominations or sponsorship please contact Sarah Watson at sarah.watson@alexandriava.gov or 703.746.3123.
The 2013 winners and their awards are as follows:
- Pat Miller: The Susan Lowell Butler Lifetime Achievement Award - The Commission for Women created the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. The Commission named Susan Lowell Butler the first recipient of the award, posthumously, for her dedication to women’s equality and well-being. Susan Lowell Butler served on the Commission for Women from 1997-2010 and chaired the Commission in 2001. The award, now named in Susan’s honor, is to be given to a woman who, like Susan, has exhibited a lifetime commitment to advancing opportunities and/or enhancing the quality of life for women/girls in the City of Alexandria.
- Erika Kleiner: Women's Health and Safety Advocate Award -This award recognizes a woman who has made a significant contribution to the well-being of women by advocating for, teaching about or providing for women's health and safety in Alexandria. This award may be for work in such areas as breast cancer education, HIV/AIDS awareness, domestic violence or sexual assault.
- Karyn Moran: Youth Community Services Award -This award recognizes an adult woman who has tapped the leadership capacities of young people in our city and/or a young woman whose service activities provide a model for other young people of the community.
- Elizabeth Todd: Leadership in Business and Career Development Award – This award recognizes either a woman business owner or a woman who has excelled in her field – and who has contributed her time and talent by providing career education and training opportunities for women and/or girls in the City of Alexandria. This award may also be given to a woman who, through her business or career, has made significant contributions in areas that directly impact the lives of women in Alexandria.
- Monica Reid: The Marian Van Landingham Legislation and Public Policy Award -This award recognizes a woman who has made a significant contribution to the status of women through advocating for issues of importance to women. This award may be for work in such areas as developing improvements in services offered by government or advocating for educational issues.
- Becky Davies and Faye Gunn: Making a Difference Award -This award honors a woman who serves as a change agent in her community or as a role model for other women. This award may be for work in such areas as helping women understand how they may effectively organize to create positive change in their own lives and in their communities. This woman may be someone who works alone or as a member of a team or organization to better the Alexandria community.
- Robin Wallin: The Vola Lawson Award - This award recognizes a City employee who, like the person this award is named to honor, has advanced, improved or otherwise contributed to the status of women in the City of Alexandria during the course of the job.
- Brooke Curran and Monika Jones: Rising Star Award - This award recognizes an Alexandria woman with less than a total of five years of volunteer service in Alexandria who has made significant contributions to the well-being of the women in the Alexandria community, particularly through community service or other volunteer projects.
- Nina Tisara: Donna Bergheim Cultural Affairs Award – This award recognizes a woman for her artistic endeavors in facilitating creative expression and personal growth in women and/or girls in our community. This award has been named after Donna Bergheim, who passed away in 2010, so that she may be remembered for her significant contributions to the artistic community in Alexandria.
Click here to view past award winners.
Silent Witness Project & Candlelight Vigil
"Witnesses are red because it is the color of our life's blood, the one way in which we are all united...no matter our race, creed, or culture. The shields are placed over the heart-our life's rhythm."
- South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence
The Silent Witness Project is a nation-wide initiative that began in Minnesota in 1990. The project was launched by a group of Minnesota women who felt an urgency to do something about the escalating domestic violence in their state. Twenty-six life-size red silhouettes were created, each bearing the name of a woman whose life was brutally cut short due to the violence in her life.
Since the project began in 1990, Silent Witness exhibits have been springing up across the United States. By 1997, forty-six states had joined with Minnesota in creating these silhouettes. In 2002, the Commonwealth of Virginia joined the silent witness project.
Alexandria has silhouettes of our own victims who died due to domestic violence. Family, friends, and community members will honor these lives by displaying these silhouettes at various locations throughout October. The silhouettes memorialize Alexandrians who died at the hands of domestic violence, since 1990. They will also represent the thousands of city residents who are still being hurt by those they love, and are still in danger.
In October of each year, in Market Square, in front of City Hall at 301 King Street, the Domestic Violence Program holds the Silent Witness Candlelight Vigil, an annual event during which we remember and honor all those who have died, or are still suffering, due to acts of domestic violence. Click here for more information about the Silent Witness National Initiative.
Grocery Store Donation Day
The Alexandria Domestic Violence Program solicits volunteers aged 18 and up to help with Grocery Store Donation Day every year during September. Morning and/or afternoon shifts are available. The grocery stores are located in the City of Alexandria. Grocery store volunteers solicit items needed for the Domestic Violence Shelter, which houses women and children fleeing from abusive homes. For more information or to sign up for next year's volunteer day, please call Jen Clayton at 703.746.4911 or email at jen.clayton@alexandriava.gov.
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