Our first guest speaker was a charming lady from the Brooks womens shelter, unfortunately her name escapes me at the moment, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by her professional presentation regarding abusive situations. As she was a woman who was currently serving in a womans shelter, I had predicted that I would be subjected to a thoroughly sexist presentation and at first things seemed to be headed in that direction. As a male who has suffered the effects of spousal abuse and a father who has lived through the same it is my opinion that in todays modern age abuse from one gender is no more likely than another. I do believe however, that due to classical gender roles men are less likely to report cases of abuse. Even in my own case, when hospitalized, filed no report to police following the event. I was thus very pleased that at a moment when students were given statements to read and were asked how many of these statements were made by women... as most of the class began to answer highly (70-80%), I was prepared to stand up and leave the class in the middle of the lecture. What happened next caused me to be taken aback as rather than the presenter reinforcing their answer and saying they were correct, she told the class it was a 50-50 split between male and female, and that the womens shelter although currently catering to woman primarily was actively working towards gender equality.
Our next presenter, Maureen from the SPEC association in Brooks (full disclosure, I can only recall her name because I have her business card.) she took more of a personal approach to her presentation. 'Moe' discussed the story of her struggles to raise both her foster AND biological children simultaneously while dealing with the death of her husband. She paired this personal story with the services her organization, SPEC, offers. Both of these ladies have helped me to reinforce for me that I am headed on the right path in my studies towards a social work degree. I highly reccommend everyone in my area check out the services offered by both of these individuals and their respective organizations.
(Requires a facebook account to view)
No comments:
Post a Comment