Women's violence awareness project goes broke

P.E.I.'s Silent Witness project, which aims to stop violence against women,is down to its last $131, says the program co-ordinator.

Eileen LeClair says she needs more funding to continueher work. It involvessetting up community displays of11 life-sized, red silhouettes 10 representing women who were murdered, and one in memory of those whose killer has not yet been charged

"Each one is roughly the size that woman would have been. That's the space she occupied on the Earth," said LeClair.

Shesets up the displays forschools, community groups and police training to keep people thinking about family violence. The project was funded by the Union of Public Sector Employees for the first seven years, but thatsupport ended in August.

LeClair raises some money selling Silent Witness ribbons for $5. But she needs about $3,000 a year to continue doing a dozen presentations a year, at least half of those at schools.

She also needs money to make new silhouettes: at a cost of about $750 apiece, she has requests from the families of two murdered Island women.

LeClair hasbeen askingthe provincial governmentfor funding for two years, but has not been successful.

Wendy Verhoek-Oftedahl, P.E.I.'s family violence prevention co-ordinator, would like more people to see the Silent Witness project, but believes in-kind donations from the community, not the government, are the answer.

"I think it really is important for the community to be together putting these silhouettes together," said Verhoek-Oftedahl.

The silhouetteswereat Holland College in Charlottetown Monday morning as part of a ceremony marking the 21st anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.