Sara Stadem | Editor
For many, October is a remind of the way love should look and feel, or more so, the way love shouldn’t look and feel like in a relationship. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the Minnehaha County Family Violence Council is trying to do just that.
The Minnehaha County Family Violence Council (MCFVC) is a community group dedicated to serving victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault. In addition to supporting victims, during the month of October, they work on bringing more awareness to domestic violence.
This year some changes had to be made to the month’s activities due to COVID. However, the MCFVC still wanted to make sure that their messages were heard.
Typically, every year the MCFVC kick starts October with a “Take Back the Night” event which is open to the public. The event provides a meal and includes a guest speaker, generally a domestic abuse survivor, and a walk to show support for the survivors.
“We couldn’t do the walk this year because we didn’t feel we could safely do it with COVID, so we had to change our forum a little bit,” stated Kelli Peterson, Chair of the MCFVC.
Since the “Take Back the Night” event couldn’t take place, law enforcement helped kick off the month by placing purple ribbon magnets on their patrol vehicles. This is to show their support in ending domestic abuse and you will continue to see the ribbons throughout the month of October.
To keep the awareness going, the MCFVC made this year a virtual Facebook event. There will be videos posted every Friday at 11:30 a.m. that will highlight different entities that are a part of ending domestic violence; entities such as a domestic violence survivor story, domestic violence investigator and state prosecutor. The month will end with a video on community resources.
“We want to see that people watch the videos, share them, post them, get the word out as much as possible,” Peterson stated. “Our goal is to do everything we can to support survivors of domestic abuse, get the word out and do everything we can to end it,” she continued.
The MCFVC has now added a button on their Facebook page to take donations if anyone would like to help financially. All funds received are put back into ways that the MCFVC can help victims in the community. “Eventually, we would like to help provide transportation for victims to and from court,” said Peterson. Although still working through some kinks, the MCFVC is working hard at figuring it out as “that’s usually a big barrier for a victim, not having someone that can safely get them to and from the court and we want to provide that for them if we can,” Peterson explained.
Peterson also explained that the MCFVC group is a pretty diverse group which many resources. This allows them to help victims fairly quickly when it comes to a fresh start, helping with a safe place to stay, providing clothing and counselors, etc.
If you are someone you know is in need of help due to domestic violence, please reach out to Kelli at 605-367-4226 or you can reach MCFVC on their Facebook page.