Darwin South Rotary District Grant Project – Promoting Peace on the home front

Article by PDG Joanne Schilling, Secretary RC Darwin South

Darwin South Rotary has had casual connection with Dawn House Women’s Shelter for several years, providing small quantities of goods on occasion, and donating cakes each year in December. Dawn House provides safe and secure crisis accommodation for women with accompanying children escaping domestic violence in their homes or community. When the opportunity for a District Grant arose, Darwin South Rotary contacted Dawn House to see if there was an area we could assist with, there was.

December and January are peak times for family violence and consequently when women and children seek safe shelter. As these women move into new accommodation to re-start their lives, they need to equip and furnish their homes. Over four months Darwin South Rotarians shopped around, priced, purchased and took delivery of bedding supplies. In addition, one of our members discovered that a store had two pallets of unwanted smoke-affected stainless-steel saucepans, cookware and other kitchen items; upon enquiry these were donated to us. Members collected the goods, then washed everything before passing them to two women’s shelters. One shelter uses some utensils in their kitchen where they teach cooking.

Members bundled the bed linen into ‘packs’, most tied with white ribbon to symbolize “no more violence”. Each pack contained a mattress protector, sheet set and quilt cover. We delivered the packs, plus pillows and blankets, to Dawn House in several consignments between December 2022 and March 2023. We spent a little over $3,000 on the project, which came under Rotary’s area of focus - Promoting Peace. We estimate we helped about 35 families.

The goods provided by Darwin South Rotary are owned by the women. Shelter staff told us that the women were thrilled to receive the goods, and commented on the quality and the fact that they were a gift to them. For security and privacy reasons, at no time did Darwin South Rotarians deal directly with any of the clients. The Dawn House Manager commented: “We really appreciate your time and generosity to do this for our women and children who are finding new homes.”