A Woman’s Place is fighting for women’s services

Recordings of speakers here:

Karen Ingala Smith, Shonagh Dillon, Nicola Benge, Cátia Freitas, Viv Hayes.

We are honoured to host a courageous panel at the forefront of the sector challenging male violence against women. They are creating, providing, developing and defending services for and with women victims and survivors of men’s violence. Register to join us online on Thursday 15 April to hear, and ask your questions, about the fight for women’s specialist services.

Biographies

Nicola Benge is a campaigner in defence of women’s domestic abuse services. She started Brighton Rise Up! in response to the council decommissioning of RISE (specialist DV services in Brighton and Hove) to generic providers. She is a service user and sees the impact this fragmentation will have on her and other survivors, locally and nationally.

Shonagh Dillon has over 26 years’ experience working in the MVAW sector, she is the founder and CEO at Aurora New Dawn working with victims and survivors of domestic abuse, sexual violence and stalking. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Portsmouth and has just submitted her thesis which researches the clash between transgender ideology and women’s sex based rights anlaysing the direct impact on the MVAW sector.

Cátia Freitas is a community and union activist. She is @Mocha_Soul on twitter where she gives a valuable online voice on women’s rights understood in the complex contexts of working class politics, internationalism and race. She speaks on men’s violence against women from her direct experience as a user of domestic violence services. She is on the editorial board of the feminist quarterly The Radical Notion.

Vivienne Hayes MBE is the Chief Executive of the Women’s Resource Centre (WRC), continuously and tirelessly working to ensure the women’s sector is alive and well despite the increasingly challenging reality in which it operates. With a network of over 500, WRC has an incomparable reach and understanding of women and their organisations. Vivienne has spent over 30 years working in the women’s sector, both delivering and managing services.

Karen Ingala Smith is CEO of nia, a women’s sector NGO. She has 30 years experience of providing specialist services to women. She is also the co-founder and director of the Femicide Census and Counting Dead Women (recording and commemorating all UK women killed by men or where a man is the principal suspect/perpetrator).

Donations

Tickets for this event are free. If you are would like to make a donation we encourage you to give to these groups:

Amina

Aurora New Dawn

Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid

nia

RISE

Women’s Resource Centre

You can also donate to Woman’s Place UK