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MAY
SPOTLIGHT
The "Brown" Family home was a dangerous and scary place. At 6 years old, witnessing cyclical physical battering, as well as psychological and emotional abuse of her mother were regular occurrences for "Jamie". "Jamie" was at an increased risk of being abused too, this is typical of all children living with violence. In addition, "Jamie" was on the road to suffering from long-term effects of witnessing domestic violence, such as impaired emotional functioning, below average academic performance, poor social adjustment and becoming involved in other abusive relationships. Sadly, children like "Jamie" who are abused (witnessing the abuse of a parent is emotional abuse) may attempt suicide, and or abuse alcohol and drugs. They also may run away from home.
The Independence House staff and volunteers provided "Jamie" and her mother with professional caring, effective counseling and advocacy and supported them in their goals of obtaining safety and self-sufficiency. This is our work and our mission, this is what we all do every day at Independence House. Our dedicated staff provides effective and high quality advocacy, counseling and support and outreach, education and prevention. In fiscal year 2006, staff answered 679 hotline crisis calls from Cape Cod victims like "Jamie's" mother, and more than 5,000 victims were provided with safe place to stay, civil legal advocacy, support groups, counseling and emergency food. In addition, the staff provided community education, outreach and prevention to over 5,000 Cape Cod youth, professionals and organizations. All of these services were free, confidential and timely to really help victims when they needed it.
Independence House is a non-profit organization that assists Survivors of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and their Children. For More Information about Independence House or to make a donation, visit www.IndependenceHouse.org
Our 24/7 Emergency Crisis Hotline is 1-800-439-6507
Our main office is located at 160 Bassett Lane, Hyannis and is open M-F ~ 8 am - 5 pm Phone 508-771-6507 |
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Let the Turf Wars Begin
by Allen Larson
Bear with me here as I'm sure you've heard these points in other contexts.
 The issues that fall within the meaning of the term "sustainability" cover the lot. The "sustainability" of any region deals with economic, social, and lifestyle decisions in addition to the environmental concerns that people more strongly tend to associate with the term "sustainability."
In this era when "green" defines a valued objective for both public sector and private business interests and when there is a building consensus about the negative consequences that result from human-induced "climate change," we're left with less time and fewer resources to devote to preexisting, longstanding quality-of-life issues like public safety, education, health care, water quality, and trash removal.
And as the number of our common concerns rises, so too does the need for resources to attend to these problems. This is actually not new. Traditionally, we've authorized our publicly elected representatives to figure out ways to divert privately held resources. They've imposed taxes.
We've also given our government representatives the power of eminent domain to take resources in addition to those collected as taxes. And in still other instances, government has at times devised creative ways to generate its own revenue by running enterprises like the lottery and other gambling businesses.
Over the years, our expanding desire for a wide range of government services has grown within the capacity of our private resources. Now, however, whenever we talk about social security, public education, health care, or public safety, we are growing increasingly aware that we seem to be headed to a day, sooner rather than later, where the level of our commitments exceeds our ability to pay.
The fiscal problem shows itself not only at the national level with large programs like social security but also at the state and local levels. It's been nearly twenty years since then State Senator Pat McGovern coined the term "budget busters" to describe budgetary problems at the state level. And it's been about the same length of time that local officials have talked about the limitations imposed by Proposition 2 1/2 to fund schools, police and fire departments, public libraries, pensions, salaries, July 4th parades, and local festivals. MORE
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Coming Together Through Art and Education
by Karen Doucette of the LAI
The Living Arts Institute, Inc. seeks to create cultures of peace and re-generate community inter-generationally through the arts and education. Its mechanisms are built around creating venues for the community at large and/or disparate groups to come together and explore socially relevant topics. The benchmark for a topic to enter the spotlight is its capacity to draw us together and remind us of our common humanity and interdependence.
The Living Arts Institute's model grows out of several theorists. We see that 'Our communities face many challenges today. Seniors encounter ageism; Youth are adrift; Neighborhoods are fragmented. People often keep to their own kind. We have found that generating community creates solutions to these problems' (Burnham & Perlstein, 1995). We also know that social engagement in aging populations has a positive influence on general health and reduced mortality (Avlund, Damsgaard, and Holstein, 1998 : Glass et al., 1999, Cohen 2006). And that creative expression mitigates the high burden of cost associated with alzheimers and depression in older individuals (Cohen 2006). Additionally, the community development work of researchers John Kretzmann and John McKnight shows that by tapping the capacities of a community, group, or of individuals rather than seeing them through a needs based lens resulting in programming to deficits, mobilizes the community and builds what Robert Putnam defines as 'social capital'. MORE
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Bringing Folks Together!
by Editor
If you have been to the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability's website (SCC), you have seen OUR Cape Cod Community Directory. The word OUR is italicized because of its importance. SCC has been working with Snap2Help to build a cohesive Affiliate Network to be used to distribute information about Cape Cod-based nonprofits and business organizations, their needs, events, and activities to sites such as CapeCodLife.com, CapeCodVoice.com, CapeCodToday.com, local Chambers, etc. with more coming online soon!
The goal is not simply to provide the information on the Internet, but to reach as many individuals as possible. We make the same information available at many of the top local Internet Sites without encumbering the efforts of these sites to communicate their specific messages. Thus, we provide OUR Cape Cod Community Directory with many different online faces in order to reach a larger audience. MORE
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