Bloem Shelter manager, Heidi Morgan, accompanied by residents and volunteers of the shelter, laid out what it is the shelter does and how they help women and children who are in need of their services.

Morgan says the shelter provides a home for women and children and most of the women who live there are women who have been previously abused, neglected or were in situations and circumstances that left them unable to fend for themselves.

“When the women are admitted, we have generated, in collaboration with other places where we have provided pathways towards wellness, self-development, employability, and community reintegration,” Morgan said.

She said the idea is that when someone arrives at the shelter they will have the opportunity to become empowered by the process to be able to reintegrate into the community. They do this by having outreaches at the shelter with a wider community and this helps people to develop skills and become sustainable and to be able to engage in society again.

“Primarily, we take the shelter as a safe haven for those who are destitute due to circumstances of abuse. This is where they can come and just feel safe mentally and physically, and this is not only a place where they have to run or have to look over their shoulders, but a place where they can be comforted knowing that they are in a safe, secure and loving environment,” said a resident and activist for most projects at the shelter, Lucritia Vorster.

Morgan says their shelter is currently full. They know this time of the year they tend to have more requests from particular women with children, and she says just this week she had a lady who called for a safe haven for her and her four children and a lady with two children.

Vorster says the main reasons there’s a rise in requests for stays in the shelter is because there’s an influx of money but there’s an outflux of responsibilities, people tend to have more options this time of the year and where there is substance abuse involved, especially with the children being at home and not at school, you get situations where the abuse is more exposed and can be a catalyst for the abuse in-house. That is when women look for different avenues such as the shelters.

“One of the ways communities can better protect women and children is to break the silence, because most of us know of that one woman who is being abused or a child that is being neglected or women on the street, Most of us think that it may be none of our business, but there are many places we can report these types of things, so we should just stop being silent about these types of things,” said Promise Meyers, a permanent volunteer at the shelter.

Morgan added that anyone who would like to support the shelter is welcome and will be taken through a tour where they would explain what the facility does.

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