After visiting Safe Harbor with my COMM 456 class, I feel much more aware and knowledgeable about domestic violence in the Upstate. I was shocked to hear that the shelter houses up to 34 women and children! That is a larger number than I expected and it warms my heart to know that so many victims are able to receive protection at once. However, the number is also upsetting because I do not believe that 34 women and children should be victims to domestic violence all at the same time in such a small area of South Carolina.
I was also glad to hear from Julie Meredith that men can also receive counseling and help, although the shelter only houses women and children. Many people assume that domestic violence victims are only women, but men can occasionally be victims as well and require certain help to recover.
Our COMM 456 class is well aware of what Julie Meredith needs us to complete for Safe Harbor now that we have spoken with her and taken a tour of the shelter. From what I gathered, our class will be promoting the rebranding of The Megan Project (now called REP- Relationship Education Project), planning an on-campus event to speak about dating abuse, and creating another event in October during domestic violence awareness month to promote Safe Harbor. Julie mentioned coming out to eat on the 5th of October as well at Chick-fil-a for proceeds to go to Safe Harbor.
I have generated a few ideas regarding these requests from Julie. As far as the rebranding of The Megan Project, our class can work on the REP Facebook and Twitter pages, create a brochure for Redfern, and post flyers around campus with the website, REPSC.org, on them.
As far as the on-campus event we will plan and host at Clemson, we could first try partnering with other clubs on campus to see if we can make the event larger. Also, we could make a stand on library bridge with purple candy and drinks to hand out to students to promote Safe Harbor. This could take place in October during domestic violence awareness month. An email would be sent out to the entire student and employee body a few days before to inform everyone to wear purple on that certain date.
An off-campus event our class could plan should be in Pickens and/or Easley because Julie mentioned that Seneca is a town that already hosts a few domestic violence programs and fundraisers in October. We could choose another fast food restaurant to benefit Safe Harbor and let the whole town and Clemson campus know to eat there on that certain date.
These are just a few temporary ideas that I hope will grow with further discussion between my classmates and professor!
I think your idea is creative with creating things that could be passed out- and incorporating Redfern too since they provide all types of services that could go along with domestic violence! Directing them back to the new website would not only give them the best information but generate hits to the website, which was another one of Julie's needs. Perhaps some people in Ardi's design class could use that as a dual project.
ReplyDeleteI think that the fast food night in Clemson is good- but I would want to encourage our class to reach out more into Easley. Like Julie said, that's a need city. I know not many of us are familiar with the area as we are with Clemson, but I think that should be a challenge to reach out to restaurants/businesses there for percentage nights or information sessions!
I really like your idea of partnering with many organizations to have a bigger event. I am in ClemsonLive, and we do this all the time in order to get more people coming to events. I also love the idea of handing things out on Library Bridge. We can give them a purple item, and make sure attached to it is info on domestic violence and Safe Harbor. Then they kind of have to look at it! This is a great marketing plan, and again something we do for ClemsonLive that works well.
ReplyDeleteKatie, I think that re-vamping the Facebook and Twitter pages for Safe Harbor is completely necessary to move the planned projects forward. Our generation is definitely more geared towards the social media movement, so our involvment is crucial! It might be really helpful to create event invitations for all of the activities we plan as a group. That would allow us to reach out to a very large number of students at Clemson, as well as other people in the community. Even just by seeing it on their newsfeeds, it would raise a tremendous amount of awareness-and hopefully spread to even more people who are on Facebook! Tweeting about upcoming events or other facts/stats about domestic violence in SC might also be a positive move towards raising awareness.
ReplyDeleteI also love the idea of including Redfern into our goal of raising awareness on Clemson's campus (Sara's comment). As students, we all know that Redfern is somewhere we can go if we get sick, but many of our peers are unaware of the other many services that they offer that could potentially be tied in with dating violence (an example may be psychological counseling-if necessary-or referrment to other medical professionals in the area that can help). I know that Redfern also has tons of educational materials laying around in the waiting rooms, so if we were to formulate some of these with our project, we could definitely see if they would put them on display as well.