Public awareness and positive social change is an important role of our agency. Over the years, NSDP has organized, facilitated and hosted numerous community initiatives, workshops and events to assess local needs and generate awareness of important issues.

Key initiatives include:

• ongoing Special Events
• Community Safety Audit
• Community Response Network

Special Events

Over the years, NSDP has developed, hosted, and/or facilitated numerous events and information sessions that focus on violence prevention, families at risk, organizational wellness, and child-centred counselling, including:

• a variety of annual violence prevention strategies (ongoing)
• 2001 House of Mirrors Tour (art installation)
• Green Thumb Theatre school presentation “Thin Line” date rape presentation (Hosted)
• Themes of Defense, Understanding Men’s violence (Hosted, Presenter: Dale Trimble)
• Child Sexual Abuse (Hosted, Presenter: Jane Middleton Motz)
• Disordered Eating (Hosted, Presenter: Sandy Friedman)
• Sexually Intrusive Children (Hosted, Presenter: Act 11 Services)
• BC Women’s Hospital Health Care Response to Violence Against Women (on-going Smithers)
• Anne Popperwell Art show, personal exploration of experiencing violence (Hosted)
• PG Disordered Eating Clinic (focusing on treatment approaches to disordered eating)
• The Vagina Monologues (Hosted, Smithers)
• Birthing Wisdom workshop (Hosted, Smithers)
• Filial Therapy Supporting the Family, presented at the National Federation of Teachers conference (Facilitated, Vancouver)
• Filial Therapy and Children Who Witness; presented at the International Conference on Children Exposed to Domestic Violence (Facilitated, Vancouver)
• The Justice Institute women abuse training (Facilitated, Smithers)

Community Safety Audit

In 1997, NSDP coordinated a community Safety Audit which involved high school volunteers interviewing members of the community, local business, and community groups to explore how safe they felt in our community and what were the issues they thought needed to be addressed. Not surprisingly the rural isolation was seen as an important issue facing our residents (e.g. lack of transportation) and the need for youth to have a safe place to go to meet and have “something to do.“

From the Safety Audit, NSDP received support to take a closer look at the isolation/transportation issues as it affected women, girls and youth. The project received provincial reorganization and was shared with several similar rural locations. The community result was encouraging as more scheduling and a youth transit system was implemented.

Community Response Network

Community Response Network is a group of people and organizations from the community who work together to coordinate, support and provide assistance for vulnerable adults experiencing abuse and/or self-neglect.

In 2001, our staff went international in sharing our rural perspective in the development of response networks to senior abuse, and presented at a conference in Cyprus Greece.