Drive for NWA Women's Shelter continues
On behalf of the Northwest Arkansas Women's Shelter board of directors, the staff and, most importantly, those individuals we serve, I thank the Northwest Arkansas community for its generous support of our Phase 1 campaign. With its help and support, we raised our goal of $150,000. Without its support, we would have had to close our doors. Because of Northwest Arkansas' support, we can continue to operate. However, like any business, we cannot rest on past accomplishments alone, rather we must continually strive to improve our services and seek the resources to do so.
We are now engaged in the second part of our effort to re-establish the breadth and depth of program the community deserves and expects. This second phase is driven by a challenge from a local resident who has offered the women's shelter $50,000 if we can raise $100,000 from the community by Oct. 1.
This challenge raises a number of interesting points. Does this community or any community truly want organizations like the women's shelter to serve those who have been abused and neglected? Are we prepared as a society to work long term to find solutions to the challenges these social problems present to businesses, education, public safety, our children and the family structure? Can we collectively solve this issue and mobilize the necessary community resources to generate a full-scale response to addressing abuse of humans across the spectrum from children to adults, including the elderly?
The Northwest Arkansas Women's Shelter understands this organization is a part of the community response to a very large social problem. It also realizes that its ability to be a part of the community response depends entirely upon the community wanting it to be a part of the response. The community's earlier answer to our Phase 1 campaign indicated to us it wants services provided to victims of domestic violence and their children to be available in Benton County -- services that include safe shelter and everything that comes with that safety, a hot line for information and crisis response, advocacy and community and prevention education. We are grateful for the confidence placed with the Northwest Arkansas Women's Shelter to continue providing women, children and men who are victims of domestic or sexual violence with the help they need in their times of crisis.
Now as we move forward with Phase 2, each person's interest, support and assistance will also be appreciated, not simply as a way of meeting the match, but as a way to say to those in need that we as a community are here for them and that people in our community can be free to live a life without violence or abuse.
In behalf of those we serve, thank you for what Northwest Arkansas has done, can do, and will do.
John C. McGee
Lowell
Executive Director
Northwest Arkansas Women's Shelter, Rogers
Commentary on 07/30/2016