Pro Women Lunch 25

We are based at Emmeline Pankhurst’s former home at 60 -62 Nelson St, where the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded in 1903, the birthplace of the Suffragette movement. It’s now a wonderful pocket-sized museum open to the public on Thursdays and Sundays and if you have not yet visited us, please do – it’s a very inspiring place, and as a Mancunian I feel very proud to come from our suffragette city.

Manchester Women’s Aid is also run from this historic building and 2024 marked 50 years of a women’s refuge in Manchester. MWA now has six refuges. We also provide community, healthcare and schools outreach.

Domestic Abuse is a blight on society, and sadly the figures are getting worse. On average victims experience 50 incidents of abuse before getting effective help and it usually takes 7 attempts to leave an abusive partner before a woman is able to leave for good.

You might wonder how we allocate places in our refuges. It’s horribly simple – places are given on the basis of the those closest to domestic homicide..

Nationally two women a week in England and Wales are killed by a current or former partner.

• 1 in 5 children have lived with Domestic Abuse.
• At least three quarters of a million children a year, that we know of witness domestic abuse, with  62% of these children also being directly harmed by the perpetrator.
• Domestic abuse often begins or escalates during pregnancy with 1 in 3 women reporting Domestic Abuse at this time, so many children are carried and born into a home of violence. Women are also at an increased risk of domestic abuse if they give birth to a girl.

That’s why the focus of our ongoing campaign is therefore the children and young people impacted by domestic abuse

We used our 50th anniversary as a year to make a difference to the lives of the children that we support in our refuges and within the community. We want to give these children reasons to smile again and to bring them moments of joy. The children’s perspective doesn’t always get the same focus, or indeed funding, as that of adults, but in fact children make up the greatest number of those living temporarily in our refuges.

Removed from their familiar environment and forced to move schools, they are unable to have their friends over due to the secrecy of their address and can sometimes struggle to express themselves with all the uncertainty of their new surroundings. They are often angry with their mother and despite everything, may miss their father. It’s shattering to realise that many of our children have never experienced a life without fear, that is, until they come to us.  But this is just the start of the process for these boys and girls.

We want to transform the lives of these children by putting them front and centre. And with your help we have been able to give these families a chance to make new memories. Your donations have paid for weekly tutor sessions, a personalised welcome box and most importantly, we are now building three playgrounds at our family refuges.

Please find a way to  continue to support us. What we want to do for each and every child is take them out of the shadows to walk and play in the sunshine.

I appreciate that at such buzzy, sociable event that much of what I have said is very hard to hear, so I wanted to conclude by thanking you most sincerely again, for this platform to raise awareness for these precious children to have better lives.