User:Ateerah/Atira Women's Resource Society

Atira Women’s Resource Society is a non-profit feminist-minded organization in the Greater Vancouver Regional District of Vancouver, British Columbia that seeks to help female identified people escape abuse, sex work, drug addiction and other forms of oppression or violence against womyn.

HERSTORY
In 1981 the South Surrey White Rock Women's Place obtained a grant to conduct a study to find out whether there was a need for a transition house in its area. The study was carried out and an advisory committee formed to oversee the work. The study, when completed, illustrated the dire need for a transition house. As a result of the findings, a group of local citizens decided to open a transition house. They soon became Atira Women's Resource Society, borrowing the name Atira from a Native American myth involving the goddess of the earth.

The organization's principles were established as follows:


 * Violence is not an accepted form of interaction and men must be held responsible for their behaviour.


 * Women and children have a right to a safe refuge when endangered.


 * The abused woman has a right to receive supportive services while in the house and upon re-entry into the community, including the right to make decisions regarding her own future and the right to information regarding alternatives which may be open to her.


 * A woman and her child can be considered a viable family unit and the battered woman has the right to make decisions regarding her own future and the future of her family unit.


 * Peer counselling and support is invaluable resources for women who are battered.

Atira soon organized itself for action, establishing committees for most of the vital areas of its business, including incorporation, membership, funding, publicity, and housing, and two members had formed a Speakers Bureau to get information to the community about the need for a transition house in the area. By 1983 Atira was officially recognized as a non-profit charitable society.

In 1987 Atira acquired a house and an office. Several policy decisions were also established then about methods of operation and staffing. E.G: Men could be accepted as volunteers in the society but only after careful screening and only for work outside the house.

Atira gained enough prominence in the local community that it needed to consider carefully its relations with other organizations. It determined not to be narrowly affiliated with any single outside organization but to have a good working relationships with all community service groups.

During 1993 two concurrent developments were pursued: a move to 24-hour staffing, and the establishment of a second stage house. Round-the-clock staffing met with virtually unanimous approval from staff and board members.

Janice Abbott, the CEO and executive director of Atira, identifies the complexity of issues as including not just circumstances of violent spousal relations but also matters of childhood abuse, systemic abuse due in part to a lack of awareness among police, physicians, judges, lawyers and social workers, and the extension of these problems to the abused women's own children.

PHILOSOPHY
The following is quoted from Atira's website reguarding their philosophy :

"We believe...
 * Violence and abuse are not acceptable forms of behaviour.
 * Women and children must have the right to live free of violence and abuse, and the threat of violence.
 * Women must have the right to protect themselves and their children from violence and abuse.
 * Women must have the right to self-determination. This includes the right to make choices about their bodies, and choices about bearing children.
 * Women must have the right to define what "family" is for them.
 * Violence/abuse against women in relationships can only be analyzed on a political and social level in which women experience a specific oppression related to social, political and economic factors.
 * The issue of violence against women in relationships is not an isolated phenomenon, it is a social phenomenon where men are encouraged to take a dominant role, which can lead to abusive and violent behaviour.
 * Violence is a learned behaviour supported by social structures. Violent/abusive men must be held responsible for their violent/abusive acts.
 * Women who experience violence in their intimate relationships do so not as a result of their own pathology, but rather as the result of the internalization of the values of a hierarchical, oppressive society which has historically assigned women a subordinate position.
 * Some women, in addition to gender, face additional barriers to full equality as a result of multiple oppressions related to class, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, disability, because they're indigenous women, or because of other status.
 * Violence in lesbian relationships is part of the continuum of violence against women. Like everyone else, lesbians have grown up in a society that condones violence and that views violence and coercion as effective ways of gaining power and control over others. Just as fear and hatred of women (misogyny) is at the root of violence in heterosexual relationships, internalized sexism, institutionalized and internalized homophobia and heterosexism are central to abuse in lesbian relationships.
 * All forms of oppression are interconnected.
 * Racism and other forms of oppression are learned, and unlearning oppressions is a life-long struggle. As feminists committed to the elimination of violence against women, we must also be committed to the elimination of all forms of oppression.
 * We are all capable of committing acts of violence and abuse, and violence and abuse must always be considered in the context of power and control. Women who are experiencing the impact of violence committed against them must not be seen as abusers if their acts of violence are committed in an effort to protect themselves or their children, or in a struggle to regain control over their lives.
 * Women who commit violent or abusive acts in an effort to exercise power and control over others must be held accountable for their behaviour.
 * The strength of our analysis comes from our diversity and emphasizes recognizing and confronting violence, racism and all forms of oppression at the personal, communal and institutional levels. We must bring this analysis to all aspects of our interaction with the women who seek our services, each other, the community, and ourselves."

16-Steps
A recovery program for women.

Aboriginal Women's Outreach Project Program
The Aboriginal Women's Outreach Project Program offers support to aboriginal women, a racial minority in Canada that often suffers great racism and prejudice. The program provides these women:
 * Legal aid
 * Advocacy
 * One-to-one support
 * Resource information and referrals
 * Support with children in conflict at school or with the law
 * Support when children have been apprehended
 * Support through custody and access disputes

Atira's Community Garden
Atira Women's Resource Society operates a community garden open to women in a building owned and operated by Atira, as well as the community.

Enterprising Women Making Art
Enterprising Women Making Art (EWMA) is a self-employment initiative for women impacted by violence and abuse who also have barriers to traditional employment.

The Family Project: Children Who Witness Abuse Support Program
The Children Who Witness Abuse Support Program is a ten week, closed support group for children who have witnessed abuse. The program is available for children ages 3 to 18 years old who have witnessed abuse.

Legal Advocate
Atira provides a legal advocate for minor circumstances, such as referrals, support in a trial, legal advice, etc.

Maxxine Wright Community Health Centre
The Maxxine Wright Community Health Centre supports pregnant women or women who have children under the age of 2 at intake, and who are impacted by substance use, violence or abuse. It provides comprehensive women-centered health care, social supports, pre-natal and post-natal medical/ nursing care, alcohol/ drug counselling, safety planning, a daily hot lunch, outreach, advocacy/ support in getting housing, income assistance, food hampers, clothing and household items, dental care, as well as information about other resources.

Rediscover Parenting
The Rediscover Parenting program helps women impacted by abuse deal with how abuse affects the mother-child dynamic. Participants are not required to currently have custody of their children nor even be parents. The program lasts for thirteen weeks.

Senior Women's Outreach
Senior Women's Outreach is a program for women 55 years old or older who have experienced abuse and/ or may not be ready to move into a transition house.

Stopping the Violence
Stopping the Violence is a strengths-based, feminist, anti-oppression, and harm reductive program that provides group and one-on-one counselling to women impacted by abuse or violence.

Wraparound
Wraparound is a program designed to enhance a woman's supports and services for herself or her family.

Women’s Community Kitchen
Participants in the Women’s Community Kitchen cook two to three nutritious meals for the rest of the participants that may also be taken home to their families.

ATIRA PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
Atira Property Management Inc. (APMI) is a wholly owned for profit property management company. The profits from APMI fund many of the programs and services at Atira Women's Resource Society. APMI manages many of the buildings Atira's programs are housed in and prides itself on socially conscious property management.

Controversies
Atira Women's Resource Society drew attention across Canada and the United States in the spring of 1995 as a result of a lawsuit in which confidential records were subpoenaed. Janice Abbott, CEO of Atira, formulated a stand against such invasions of confidentiality and was featured in articles about it.

HONOURS/ AWARDS
Janice Abbott, the CEO and executive director of Atira Women's Resource Society has been nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2010 award. In September of the same year Ms. Abbott won the award for Social Entrepreneur Of The Year.

SOCIAL ACTIVISIM
Atira has been very involved and vocal regarding issues relating to women in Vancouver, BC and its surrounding areas. They have been involved in many campaigns, even against other like-minded organizations, when women are being mistreated, oppressed, abused or treated in anyway less than equal.

One such example is when Atira wrote the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective to speak out against disallowing transgendered identified women from using their women-only pharmacy-- the first of its kind in North America.