Celebrating 100 Women
6 Apr 2023
Back in Jan 2021, Grampian Women’s Aid ran their first Own My Life course - the innovative 12-week programme for women who have experienced domestic abuse. This year, we will see one hundred women having completed the course and what better time to celebrate this milestone than International Women’s Day!
With that in mind, Sandra, Group Lead and Own My Life course facilitator, arranged a “Celebrating 100 Women” lunch event for participants to relax, have fun, and celebrate their achievements.
It was a wonderful few hours. Beautiful piano-playing accompanied the women while women enjoyed the delicious lunch. Kirsty Campbell-Robertson was the talented pianist, and we thank her for so kindly giving up her time to play for us.
After lunch, Natalie Collins, Own My Life author, and CEO of the Women’s Liberation Collective which oversees the course, joined us via Zoom. She gave an interesting overview of her work and took lots of questions from the women attending.
Next up, Alison Hay, our Fundraising & Development Lead, shared the story of Grampian Women’s Aid’s journey towards running the Own My Life course, and, of how we are especially pleased to offer the course to women throughout Grampian as an innovative stand-alone service. This means that not only women who we already support can join but, also, any women who has experienced domestic abuse, whether supported by us previously or not, can apply to join the course.
Alison also talked about ways we may be able to fundraise for an annual Own My Life event like this lunch and invited women to think about this. Already, some ideas have been put forward!
Sandra then took to the floor and took the opportunity to introduce Gaynor who recently joined us as our Volunteer OML Facilitator. She then thanked everyone for attending and for contributing to the event and finished off by reading “Emily’s Poem” (linked below). The perfect ending to a perfect couple of hours.
It was such a special event with lots of comments from the women attending about meeting each other in person having spent twelve weeks getting to know each other on-line. Alison says “the success of OML is down to 3 main components: the structure and the content of the course for which we have Natalie Collins and the Women’s Liberation Collective to thank; the wonderful facilitators who are Sandra and Gaynor who bring both compassion and knowledge; and finally and most importantly, the brave, courageous and determined women who attended and all that they bring to the programme. Thank you to you all."
Links:
Natalie Collins, Own My Life Course author