Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women in Duluth, Minnesota provides services to women and children whose lives have been affected by physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Some women who use our services are in physical danger. Others are living with controlling partners in relationships that are emotionally abusive. We provide an array of services including 24-hour emergency shelter, individual advocacy, legal advocacy, information and referrals, support groups, and community education. Lisa Heyesen Our budget does not afford us the luxury of staffing a technology manager to oversee our website content and maintenance, let alone our networking, hardware, and other information technology demands. All updates made to our website are performed by staff untrained in html or website design. Layout changes, including removing or adding certain sections and content that could have potentially improved our website have been left undone as we don’t have the expertise to execute these demands. In conjunction with the above challenge, content updates to the new site would need to be relatively straightforward. Today we use Macromedia Contribute for our updates and we hope to continue to use this software for our new website as well. Safe Haven Shelter thanks you for taking the time to consider our organization for inclusion in the Overnight Website Challenge event. Duluth 2010-01-06T17:52:28Z 2010-01-06T17:40:28Z Susan Utech 1,558,484 as of 6/30/2009 218-728-5084 An improved website will allow us to significantly cut down paper products utilized to run our organization. We rely on numerous flavors of brochures, flyers, and mailings to communicate with our clients and partners. Some of this information is duplicated on our website, and on the other hand, some content is missing entirely from the website thereby creating this need for additional pamphlets (i.e. Family Justice Center). We’d also like to publish a newsletter more consistently, but funding concerns surrounding the cost of mailing such items prevent us from doing so. The added functionality in regards to the Follow-up Advocacy program will result in an improved method of communication with our clients. This will reduce the number of 1-1 meetings required thereby diminishing transportation costs and associated harmful emissions, and additionally, it will further decrease our need for paper. 39 None, spenditure is approximate $6,000 for maintenance and repairs A major challenge we face while serving battered women is outreach and communication. This can be defined as educating the public on domestic violence, engaging the community for support and partnership opportunities, and most importantly providing valuable information to women in need of shelter and safety, and interacting with them in an efficient and helpful manner. In our current website, we attempt to provide a multitude of information targeted to different audiences such as battered women, donors, volunteers, local schools and academic institutions, business organizations, and various other members of the community. However, the content lacks critical information, and the layout is confusing and ineffective in leading us towards our goals. A new website will significantly enhance our ability to interact, inform, engage, and create lasting relationships with our clients and partners. Below are a few of the proposed changes we'd like to implement: 1.) Revise the overall layout and navigation for smoother browsing 2.) Create a new section for the Family Justice Center (more details provided below) 3.) Create a new section for Follow-up Advocacy (to include on-line chat, scheduling, and a dashboard to track goals) 4.) Create a new section for Community Involvement (for upcoming events, evaluations, donations, feedback, interfacing with social media) 5.) Create a softer, warmer look and feel 6.) Expand content to include details of our support groups, and instruction on how to create an effective safety plan 7.) Add audio and video testimonies from survivors of domestic violence The Lake Superior Regional Family Justice Center is a part of the Safe Haven Shelter program, and is an "off the street" service for the women in the twin ports community. It is at this location where our legal advocacy services are offered, as well as office space for various community partners and wellness services staff by local volunteer professionals in the area. Our current website contain very little information on this new program, thus we are unable to effectively promote such important benefits and services. We envision the new Family Justice Center section to have the following: 1.) A list of our services and how they can assist women in need 2.) On-line scheduling system for women to book appointments, and for community partners and professional volunteers to access 3.) Forms available on-line to obtain the necessary information to immediately assist the women and children without waiting for them to walk into the Center These changes to our website will allow us to communicate in an effective and comprehensive manner as to how our organization supports, assists, and advocates for battered women. This will not only lead to expanding the number of women and children served, thereby changing lives by helping to transform victims to survivors, it will also improve our capacity to inform and educate the community on domestic violence and its effects, and will enhance our capability to leverage and harness community resources. /system/logos/39/normal/SHS_Logo_Purple_Red.jpg?1262802059 image/pjpeg SHS_Logo_Purple_Red.jpg 30950 2010-01-06T18:20:59Z We provide safety for women who are battered and their children, and work to end violence against women. Our Philosophy The Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women believes that violence against women is rooted deep within our culture. It originates from within the same social fabric of institutional oppression, which spawns racism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, religious bigotry and discrimination against people who have disabilities. The Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women seeks to strike a balance between offering services to diverse victims while working toward the erosion of the cultural facilitators of battering. We are committed to providing shelter, safety and advocacy for the individual victims of battering. At the same time, we understand the necessity of action to move toward the elimination of social oppression and battering of women. Because violence against women is so deeply rooted in our culture, we recognize the need for a multi-faceted approach to the issue, including development of an effective response to the criminal justice, medical, religious, and social systems. We believe it is necessary to raise community awareness through publicizing the issue and through education in our schools and community organizations. Finally, we recognize that every person carries the cultural seed out of which oppression rises. We believe that each of us, as individuals, must take responsibility to look within ourselves to identify our own attachment to beliefs and values which justify another’s oppression. We believe that change must start there, within ourselves. Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women 218-740-6601 $2,214,370 as of 6/30/2009 false true MN P.O. Box 3558 411317462 2010-01-11T21:06:27Z http://www.safehavenshelter.org 55803