Ending Abuse United Kingdom Project #25380

Help women and children live in safety

by Leeds Women's Aid

Project Report | Sep 12, 2017
We've merged and increasing our support!

By Nik Peasgood | CEO

Children looking down into camera!

We've had a really great, if busy, few months, hence the slight delay in our latest report. Please accept our apologies. We have had great news, HALT Domestic Violence has merged with Leeds Women's Aid (LWA). Our project of working with young women and girls has a great new home, and we now have so many different services for women and girls in Leeds. We have been busy working to keep young women and girls safe.

On average two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner every week in England and Wales

130,000 children within the UK are currently living with Domestic Abuse

In 2016 the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) gave advice or support related to a possible forced marriage in 1,428 cases (80% of whom were female)

We have a working name of LWA incorporating HALT and are now the largest women’s charitable organisation in Leeds. We provide a range of the very best services for vulnerable women and girls with a multiple and complex needs along with victims and survivors of: domestic, sexual & honour based violence and abuse; forced marriage; trafficking; stalking and harassment.

HALT (Help, Advice and the Law Team) was responsible for the delivery of the Independent Domestic Violence advocacy (IDVA) service in Leeds. HALT was established in 1994 working with victims of domestic, sexual and honour based violence, stalking and forced marriage. It was the first advocacy project of its kind in the UK, and many other areas of the country have developed similar projects.

Leeds Women’s Aid (LWA) was established in 1973 and opened the second refuge in the country. LWA provide community based support and emergency refuge accommodation for women and children affected by domestic violence and women who have been trafficked into the sex industry. LWA is the lead agency in the Leeds Domestic Violence (LDVS) Consortium and the Big Lottery funded Women’s Lives Leeds (WLL) project.

We have the provision to house up to 44 women and 100 children at any one time; we are working with over 200 women, young women and girls across Leeds every day, to help them be safer, happier, healthier and more secure.

Please stay with us for the next stage in our journey and join in when you can.

Thank you for being a supporter and for believing in us!

All the team at LWA incorporating HALT :)

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May 11, 2017
Great times fundraising

By Nik Peasgood | Project Leader

Feb 13, 2017
Our Really Successful Crowdfunding Challenge, because of you!

By Nik Peasgood | Director

Thank You

Before working with GlobalGiving we had very limited experience of on-line fundraising and no experience of crowdfunding. So, full of excitement and trepidation we got lots of support and advice from them and put together our donations page, trying to explain what we do and why. We tried to get across to potential new donors (you!) how much we would appreciate any donation and how special we would feel no matter how much people could afford to give us.

Nik says: “Our whole organisation – both paid staff and Trustees – got on board very early on; we publicised our Page electronically, did off-line events and annoyed everyone we knew, asking them to donate – the momentum was spectacular!”

We set a full project target of £5,336, but the target of the Challenge was that we hoped to be able to reach £2,500 with 50 donors. If we did this, we would become a ‘partner’ of GlobalGiving, and then we would be able to use their site, and their expertise, to continue to raise money towards the full target over time.

Nik continues: “We knew that we were unlikely to win the challenge as we are a small to medium local charity and were up against national and international charities, but the camaraderie was excellent within the challenge and the spirit of ‘joining in’ really rubbed off. Our team were amazing, we had buckets, cupcakes, on-line donations, biscuit baking (see the theme!!) and it all started an incredible momentum that didn’t seem to stop”.

We faced setbacks but also came up with innovative ideas – because it was Christmas time they did a social media campaign to ask people to donate to their charity instead of buying Christmas cards. Also a member of staff wrote a really engaging poem.

Dawn (author of the poem) says: “I love poems and find it is a way of getting a lot of information to people in a short and fun way. I find it easy to write things in an engaging way in a poem and it’s great to see people’s reactions to it”.

Although our team knew that we have a lifesaving project, it was quite difficult to promote as we can’t use photographs of real clients due to their age and the sensitivity and risk attached to our work, we were successful at generating more and more interest.

We managed to beat the GG target of £2,500 and our total stands at £2,803 and we have had 68 individual donations.

Nik ends by saying: “Because of the amazing training and resources offered to us by the brilliant GlobalGiving team, the dedication of the whole of our organisation in learning and translating that learning into action, and the amazing support and generosity of you, our donors, we are now a “Super Star” partner of GlobalGiving and are already a Top-Ranked Organisation (we have a ‘badge’ to prove it!) We have thoroughly enjoyed the Crowdfunding Challenge, it has been so rewarding, both financially (donations are still coming in!) and knowledge wise for the organisation.”

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