“The world wants your voice,” begins “Say One thing,” an illustrated kids’s e book by Peter H. Reynolds. “It doesn’t should be good, so long as it’s out of your coronary heart.”
Final week, New Hope Midcoast, an advocacy and assist group focusing on home violence, visited third, fourth and fifth grade school rooms at Fisher Mitchell Faculty in Bathtub, utilizing books like “Say One thing” to introduce college students to ideas like standing up for struggling friends. Via age-appropriate classes on inclusivity, empathy and boundary setting, the group hopes to arrange the subsequent technology for future conversations on home violence, which they are saying has spiked in Maine through the pandemic.
“We actually wish to lay that groundwork,” mentioned Allison Fortin, a youth educator & advocate for New Hope Midcoast. “These are abilities and matters that they’re going to essentially want and construct off of as we progress to center faculty and highschool, and we begin speaking about actually heavy matters.”
Allison Fortin, a youth educator & advocate for New Hope Midcoast, taught 12 40-minute classes to 3rd, fourth and fifth grade lessons at Fisher Mitchell Faculty final week. Contributed / Allison Fortin
New Hope Midcoast, previously known as New Hope for Ladies, offers authorized advocacy, housing and assist providers for victims of home violence in Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox and Waldo counties, in keeping with Govt Director Rebekah Paredes.
Like Maine’s eight different Home Violence Useful resource Facilities, New Hope Midcoast has seen an uptick within the variety of individuals searching for assist because the starting of the pandemic, she mentioned.
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Within the 12 months previous to the pandemic, the group obtained just below 1,200 calls on its 24/7 helpline, Paredes mentioned. Final 12 months, over 2,200 individuals known as the helpline, probably the most within the group’s historical past.
A part of the soar could also be an indication that New Hope has reached extra individuals who already wanted help, Paredes mentioned. However she added that pressure from the pandemic has additionally seemingly exacerbated the issue of home violence.
“There’s at all times some pre-existing energy and management imbalance inside the household unit, which is the place home abuse is predicated off of,” she mentioned. “However there’s additionally this added enhance in stress.”
Over 13,000 Mainers obtained assist from a Home Violence Useful resource Middle in 2021, in keeping with Karen Wyman, Prevention and Intervention Director for the Maine Coalition to Finish Home Violence. She famous that the precise variety of individuals affected by home and relationship violence within the state is probably going considerably increased.
Whereas this concern could appear far faraway from a kids’s e book about empathy, Wyman and the New Hope staff agreed that age-appropriate schooling might form how as we speak’s youngsters react to future classes extra particularly focusing on home violence.
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“A lot of our work in responding to home abuse is after it occurs,” Wyman mentioned. “Our prevention schooling efforts are actually getting at making an attempt to alter the circumstances in our communities, together with in our faculties, that permit abuse to occur and go unchallenged. It builds a behavior of respect and trustworthiness with friends, with different adults, with everybody in the neighborhood.”
New Hope has provided 89 displays in faculties because the starting of the present faculty 12 months, reaching greater than 1,800 college students, in keeping with Paredes.
At center and excessive faculties, Fortin presents on probably difficult matters like abuse and consent, she mentioned. However her visits to elementary and pre-schools, which often contain a gaggle dialogue a couple of kids’s e book and a associated artistic exercise, have a tendency to interact college students and encourage them to implement New Hope’s classes.
“I believe a whole lot of youngsters actually like having the house in a protected and respectful setting the place they’ll have these conversations,” she mentioned. “Total it’s been actually constructive.”
Mainers who’re affected by home abuse, relationship violence or stalking can name the Midcoast helpline at 1-800-522-3304 or the Maine helpline at 1-866-834-4357, or go to newhopemidcoast.org.
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